


No Such Men Return

by glasscaskets



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Awesome Howling Commandos, Backstory, Body Horror, Gay Feelings, Gen, Healing, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Body Modification, POV Bucky Barnes, Period Typical Attitudes, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 10:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscaskets/pseuds/glasscaskets
Summary: When he is thirteen, Bucky Barnes decides he has to learn to fight to protect the people he loves. This singular mission never really stops.OR: Filling in the gaps of three Captain America movies and the life and times of James Buchanan Barnes and the first and best thing he ever loved: Steve Rogers.





	1. Prologue: The Boxer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lucidnancyboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucidnancyboy/gifts).



> They sent forth men to battle,  
> But no such men return;  
> And home, to claim their welcome,  
> Come ashes in an urn.  
> -Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_
> 
> I owe several people some colossally big thanks: the incredible [Jessie Lucid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucidnancyboy), whose beautiful art inspired this fic; wonderful Allyvia, for beta'ing; absolute history nerd and wonderful friend [vextant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant), and my beyond amazing, absolutely beloved [prufrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrock/pseuds/prufrock), and everyone in the CapRBB chat/community for being awesome! Also, Lillian and/or Tony, if you ever see this, thanks for the moral support. 
> 
> Last but not least: historical notes will be included at the end of the chapter.

Bucky Barnes only fought his best friend once, and it wasn’t much of a fight.

When Bucky was ten, a man broke into his family’s second story apartment on east 52nd street and attempted to rob it. Bucky had been asleep in the room he shared with his sisters, and his father, who was a longshoreman and rarely home, had mercifully been present to hit the intruder over the head with a fire poker. Bucky and his sisters had slept through the entire thing, but Bucky had come away from it all with a keen interest in self defense.

His father had told him the fire poker would have to do, but his mother, perhaps sensing the anxiety underpinning this masculinist urge, had taken him into Queens on a Saturday, her three younger children under arm, to see her uncle Rudy, who after a quiet conversation agreed to teach Bucky the fundamentals of hand to hand combat.

Rudy was greying, lined, and wiry; he seemed too old to fight and yet Bucky could tell immediately, from the way he moved, that to underestimate him would be deeply foolish. Standing in the little gravel speckled yard behind Rudy’s house, watched by his mother and sisters, Bucky was shadow boxed, then really hit, hard, in the side of the head.

It hurt, and made his head spin, and he turned to his mother in furious indignation, expecting her to object. She’d never once let their father do more than box their ears in, and even spankings were rare. But his mother didn’t come to his defense, and as he waited, staring at her, the girls silent too as they waited to see what would happen, Rudy hit him again.

“That hurt!” Bucky had yelled, indignant, shocked, holding his hot, throbbing ear furiously. “That _hurt_!”

“Stop me then,” Rudy had said, and swung to strike Bucky a third time, but Bucky dove sideways out of his reach, crashing into the pebbly grass and feeling skin at his elbow break.

“Not good enough,” Rudy said, and to Bucky’s horrified astonishment, he went to kick Bucky in the ribs.

“ _Mom_!” Bucky squawked, but at the same time he rolled away and scrambled to his feet, his heart racing and his body trembling minutely. He was scared, and shaken, and Rudy was advancing again.

Bucky dodged a second time, this time maintaining his balance, and when Rudy pulled back his fist to hit Bucky for the fourth time, Bucky used his lesser height to his advantage, swung his fist low like a pitcher throwing underhand, and drove his fist hard into Rudy’s unyielding belly.

“Atta boy,” Rudy had growled approvingly, but Bucky had glanced to his mother, who was smiling at him.

This scene had replayed itself again and again until the sun began to go down, and by the end of the day, quietly rocking back home on the subway with his sister Ruth listing against him, he’d felt for the first time that he might one day grow up to be a real man.

The next day, Steve had found all of this tremendously, overwhelmingly exciting, demanding a play by play of every moment of it. Steve at twelve had been startlingly thin, with a distended belly and ridges on his large, protruding front teeth. He’d lisped and stuttered as he followed Bucky around their barren schoolyard, hopping on the trampled, yellow grass, demanding details and replays and demonstrations. (The lisp would be gone within a year, the stutter within two, and both were much reduced from their primary school days, when Steve could barely let out so much as a “Hey, Bucky!” without pausing to stammer over a vowel sound. By the time of uncle Rudy, the speech impediments were only present when Steve was very nervous or very excited, but in hearing about the fighting lesson, he was all but overwhelmed with excitement.)

“Tell me about it ag-g-gain,” he begged, wiggling joyfully in his ill-fitting coat, almost skipping to keep up with Bucky’s strides. 

“No,” said Bucky, sourly, because Steve’s enthusiasm was off-putting; too childish, maybe, or just too enthusiastic about the prospect of a fight.

He seemed to misunderstand that this had been about proving something, about protecting his family, about only fighting when he had to. Steve fought all the time, he fought everyone. He loved to fight. He fought strangers and schoolmates, kids twice his size and kids three times his size and the very tiny percentage of Brooklyn’s adolescent male population that was of fighting age and Steve’s height. He fought boys for stealing from other people’s stores, for picking on other kids, for looming over girls, for calling him names, for ruining movies, for picking on people he knew, for picking on people he didn’t know, for displaying bad subway etiquette, for yelling rude things, and once, memorably, for sticking a hand into the collection box at St. Thomas’s. St. Thomas’s wasn’t even Steve’s church, but Bucky’s; Steve and his mother attended Our Mother of Mercy, but that was Steve. He fought. He loved it, he loved to punch and to scramble on the ground and to get his blood up; it tied him to the world, it made him feel decent about himself.

You couldn’t exactly blame Steve for his attachment to fighting, especially given that nobody had succeeded in killing him yet. Steve was lamentable. Bucky had spent a decent amount of time contemplating it, especially as he grew and Steve, well, didn’t.

Steve was four feet, four inches tall—a victory over congenital heart disease and over two years spent languishing at 4’ even—and 65 pounds, making him astonishingly small for the filthiness of his mouth. His rib cage and hip bones protrude, and his limbs are sinewy and ropey, unpleasantly thin. His nose was too big for his face, and his chin was too small. He had not yet needed to shave, and his voice had shown not the slightest inclination towards cracking. He constantly squinted, nearsighted and astigmatic, and had almost total hearing loss in his left ear since a bout of meningitis when he was four. His asthmatic, surly lungs ached and burned near constantly, while his heart, ever erratic and irregular, seemed less to pump blood than to hurl it around whenever such a task could be managed; the combined effects of his lifelong heart and lung problems was a constant wheeze and a chest that was rarely without pain. The little symphony was often joined by the steady percussion of stomach aches, frequent infections, and chronic bronchitis. Bucky adored him.

“C’mon, show m-m-me,” he’d begged, leaping in front of Bucky and widening his stance, holding up his fists in shadow-boxing readiness. “Show me, Bucky, c’mon, I c-c-c-c-c-can do it.”

Bucky looked at his friend for a long time, standing in the mud and weak sunshine with his tiny fists raised and his red face shining eagerly, almost joyfully, his yellow hair hanging over one eye and his shapeless jaw thrust out.

It was the fall of 1930; they were thirteen and twelve, respectively. In the twelve years of Steve’s life, he had missed Mass nine times, each time because he was too sick to successfully hold his own head up. His father had been dead for six years, and his mother would die in six. While she was alive, she was a nurse, and worked constantly, sparing time only to lament that her son was still small, still surly, and still too short and thin to successfully wear his father’s old clothes. Bucky knew Steve had never been kissed and hadn’t held anyone’s hand since his mother nearly broke his fingers when they buried his father in the first week of 1924. Bucky made his money by delivering for a dry goods store; Steve worked at a movie theater in the summers. Steve and his mother lived in a one-room apartment on Myrtle Avenue above a fish market, and they put a flat board on top of a bathtub for a kitchen table. They had only one bed. Steve had slept in a drawer for as long as he possibly could without hurting himself, pulled from an old chifferobe on top of which sat absolutely the only item of any value at all that his family owned, a silver picture frame in which sat a mottled old gelatin print of his mother’s family—her parents with their seven children—taken back in Limerick in 1899. Steve had never met any of the people in the picture save his mother, who was the wispy blonde infant at the center of the photograph. By the time Steve’s name is a famous one, thirteen springs later, this picture will be lost to history, and never recovered.

Steve had just begun the eighth grade, and it would be the last school year he ever completed; he’d drop out in the new year when he was thirteen, halfway through the ninth grade, to work. His best and only friend—that is to say, Bucky—will stay on at Erasmus, which had been in various states of construction for the entire time he and Steve had known of it, for another year and half, before dropping out after the eleventh grade. This was the luxury afforded by having a living father.

Their fighting days weren’t over, and wouldn’t be for a long time; they’d keep getting into scrapes, and then brawls, and then firefights. They’d fight in empty lots and wet alleys and dim bars and trenches and fields and airplanes and trains and warehouses and bombed out shells of hospitals and hotels. They’d teach one another to dance to the radio belonging to Steve’s mother, in their socks and suspenders, tipsy on weak beer. They’d hop subway turnstiles, and receive serial numbers, and buy pretty girls drinks, and fight in the European theater. Steve would be lambasted in the _Willie and Joe_ comics; Bucky would be featured prominently in the third highest selling issue of _Time_ magazine printed in the 1940s.

Over the next eighty-eight years, both Bucky’s and Steve’s names and faces would become famous, would be plastered across banners and book covers and television screens, used in their absence to sell and promote everything from war bonds to the Marshall Plan to laundry detergent to Operation Desert Storm. Bucky’s grandfather’s farm in Indiana would become, many years later, Bucky Barnes Memorial Park; the signatured library card belonging to Steve currently wriggling its way out of his back pocket would one day be worth a cool million dollars. They would both be the subjects of History Channel Original Productions, as well as a Palme D’Or winning documentary in 2005. They would both be the honorees of bodiless funerals in the year 1945, Bucky survived by his mother, his father, and three sisters Rebecca, Ruth, and Lillian; Steve survived by no one at all.

None of this was in Bucky’s head that day, and much of it he couldn’t have possibly known, but it would all come to seem very important later. In the moment, though, there was only Steve’s high, scratchy voice, the whine in it, the waning afternoon sun, the scrapes on Bucky’s forearms and shins from uncle Rudy’s yard.

“I’m not gonna show you right now,” he’d said, wearily. “You pick too many fights, little guy.” _Little guy_ , to make Steve see he meant it.

“I don’t p-p-pick fights,” Steve had retorted, as he always did, and as always Bucky snorted. Bucky was thirteen now and had been for awhile, a position that gave him infinite wisdom in the face of Steve’s splotchy, undersized newly twelve-ness.

“Yes, you do,” Bucky said, like he always did.

“I jus-just go after people being pricks,” Steve whined, his rehearsed retort that was rapidly becoming his identity, the first thing people knew about him.

“How is that not starting a fight?”

This was always when Steve gave a different answer, because, being Steve, he was always awash in relevant fresh examples. Today, though, he said, “Being a p-p-p- _prick_ is starting the f-fight!”

“Excuses, excuses,” Bucky tutted, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking out imperiously over Steve’s head before turning and beginning his way towards the low gate that lead out of the schoolyard. The last time they’d had this argument, Steve had demanded why he cared. Bucky hadn’t been sure how to explain that he had limited interest in seeing Steve pounded into an early grave in a East Flatbush for the honor of a stranger.

But, full disclosure, there was more to it, too, because Bucky wanted to. To. Well, to keep Steve. Keep him still, and stable, and—safe. He always had, and recently the need had become a great deal more acute; it was upsetting when Steve did stupid shit, it really bothered him, it made him mad. He found himself thinking about Steve, a lot, about his movements and his strangled sentences and his tiny apartment, his drawings in the margins of newspapers and his job at the movie theater and the way he chewed up his pencils. His tiny body, his strange tiny body, and his fighting, the way he threw that strange little body around, the ways it was like Bucky’s body and the ways it wasn’t.

He knew he wore boyhood more easily than Steve, but with the first signs of puberty peeking over the horizon, certain secret parts of Bucky, things that had seemed so harmless when he was younger, started to become troublesome, nerve-wracking, incriminating. The way he liked to be so close to other boys, to be touching Steve in even very small ways. The way his hands moved, the way his hair fell over his brow, the shape of his mouth; the way the sharpness of Clive Brook’s profile in _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_ was so endlessly intriguing. The way he walked and moved; the way he caught himself sometimes just _looking_ , at boys. At men. Just looking—these were all portents of something unsettling to come; he didn’t know what, but he knew they weren’t good. He didn’t know if other boys had this feeling, this sense of desperate, constant bodily awareness, of something coming, of holding themselves in readiness.

It had only been in the last few months that Bucky had picked up, entirely from dirty jokes, that men could have sex with each other, and his awareness that some people were _fairies_ and that they were different, physically, like a paper creased in the wrong spots, like something installed wrong, that they wanted from other men what the men in the movies on the heavy reels Steve lugged to and from the projection box day after day all summer long for nineteen cents an hour longed for from dewey, dark-lipped women, but it was only now, suddenly, that he realizes why such information has been stuck so insistently in the back of his mind, why every joke or crude insinuation on the matter leaves a residue inside his head.

He did not want to hit Steve. He didn’t know why Steve was demanding to get hit.

Steve was more tetchy about his _boyness_ , felt his small body and delicate hands and long eyelashes and constant sidelining at the hands of pneumonia and fever and asthma meant he had to prove himself, and so Bucky hadn’t been surprised when Steve was enraptured with the story of Rudy.

None of this was in his head in the schoolyard in the orange setting sun, but later, when Bucky thought about it from the vantage point of eighteen, or twenty-three, from a trench or a table or in a rickety Jeep splashing over ruined Italian mud-roads behind Steve, time would telescope and stretch around this long afternoon, and it would all seem crucial, like a frozen moment Bucky might have rewritten if he’d caught it in time.

“Just sh- _show_ me,” Steve whined.

“You start too many fights.”

“Isn’t breaking-ing-ing-ing in-in-into your apartment is s-starting the fight?” Steve snapped, jabbing his hand into Bucky’s kidney.

He rounded on Steve, seized his shoulders and ducked down so their eyes were level. For a moment, he found himself distracted by details—the little crease between Steve’s brown eyebrows, the hungry hollow of his cheeks, the brightness of his squinty little eyes, thrown wide when Bucky grabbed him, the way his lips and his gums were the exact same soft pink—

“Don’t fucking hit me,” he said, squeezing Steve hard and feeling those tiny, sinewy shoulders shift with startling ease under his grip. He could crush Steve, break him in half, with close to no effort at all. The thought made him queasy and oddly keen, oddly intrigued. He resisted the urge to squeeze Steve again.

“Teach m-me to fight,” Steve snarled back. His breath was coming fast and shallow, and his face was bright red; Steve hated being grabbed. It made him feel tiny, everyone knew; Bucky also suspected it reminded him too much of his father. Bucky had only met Steve’s father twice, once before and once after he’d broken Steve’s wrist.

“You fight plenty,” Bucky had replied, and he was angry, he couldn’t stand this stubborn shit, he couldn’t stand Steve using his own mounting anxiety against him. He needed Steve to stay still, even if their apartment was getting broken into and Dad’s hours were cut and he might not be able to stay in school and nothing was going the way he’d imagined it would. “You don’t need to fight any more than y’already do.”

“L-l-leg _go_ of me,” Steve snapped.

“You’re gonna hit me again if I do.”

“No.”

Bucky let go. Steve immediately twisted, jumped away, and swung hard, his fist connecting hard with Bucky’s rib. Bucky leapt away again, screeched, “You little _shit_!” and blocked Steve’s next attempt to hit him. He wound his fist up and clocked Steve in the shoulder; Steve staggered but, undeterred, hopped back into position, ducked low as Bucky had done with his uncle Rudy, and drove his fist hard into Bucky’s stomach.

“The fuck!” Bucky hollered, and lunged at Steve in earnest, toppling them both into the grass and immediately paying for it when Steve’s elbow dug hard into his belly. Steve was wriggling like a trapped puppy, and cursing a blue streak, and Bucky was suddenly jolted with a kind of kinetic anger that had his fist, almost without his consent, driving hard into Steve’s cheek; Steve retaliated with eight ragged fingernails dragged across Bucky’s face, down over his eyes and it stung to shit, and when Bucky drew his fist back up he was beaten to the quick by Steve’s dense, oversized head slamming furiously into his nose.

“FUCKER,” Bucky howled, and slapped Steve clean across the face. Steve called him a prick and drove his knee hard into Bucky’s groin, prompting Bucky to yelp and roll off of Steve and land hard in the dirt. People had gathered around by then, hooting and shouting, and Steve spat onto the ground and sat up, looking dazed, already blooming a red bruise on his cheek were Bucky had punched him. He was panting, shining with sweat, muddy, and radiant.

“Thanks,” he said, panting and grinning like a lunatic.

 

* * *

 

 

Many years later, when Uncle Rudy was long dead and Bucky was a three-time YMCA welterweight boxing champion known throughout East Flatbush for his quick feet and lethal lefty sucker-punch, and Steve was known throughout East Flatbush for being the angriest little fairy in the city of New York, and they’d both won and lost a great many more fights, and Bucky was prone to accusing Steve of _liking_ to get hit, Bucky would wonder if that fight on the playground was the day he sealed his fate. He and Steve Rogers, to the end of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I've taken Steve and Bucky's biographical details, as much as possible, from what is presented in the films; Bucky's memorial at the Smithsonian states he was the oldest of four children and, of course, also gives him two birthdates. I've stuck with Bucky being born in 1917 and Steve in 1918.
> 
> -The _Willie and Joe_ comics were a massively popular [series of comics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_and_Joe) created by Bill Mauldin, first for the 45th Infantry Division newspaper from 1940-43, and then in _Stars and Stripes_ magazine for the remainder of the war. They are brilliant works of satire, humor, and commentary, and evolve as their artist endured five years at war. Mauldin, I am fairly certain, [would not have thought very highly of Captain America](https://oldtales7.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/096.jpg), at least when he was a USO attraction. Mauldin [was not fond of propaganda](https://i.imgur.com/erDniFA.jpg). 
> 
> -I've tried whenever possible to make slang true to the period. _Prick_ was in use to mean "rude/dumb man" by the early '30s in the United States (some weird research went into that), and _fairy_ was a term of the period to mean a gay or effeminate man.


	2. Chapter One: The Sergeant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes at the end. If you hover your mouse over text that isn't in English, a translation should appear. Translations at the bottom, just in case.

Bucky, it turned out, was pretty good at the army.

This came as something of a surprise; unlike Steve, his immediate response to the news of Pearl Harbor and the declarations of war exchanged immediately thereafter had not been a frenzy of anticipation and patriotism. While Steve had flapped the newspaper in everyone’s face, periodically shoving it under his own nose to read aloud the details of the event, Bucky had hung back, intrigued but anxious. Unlike Steve, Bucky didn’t have a war hero dad ( _some hero_ , Bucky was inclined to add, but these are things one only thinks, and does not say, about a best friend’s father), he didn’t have a specific regiment with which he wanted to align himself. Steve’s father had joined the army to assimilate and, in a lot of ways, Bucky suspected Steve wanted to for the same reason.

Steve was rejected from three draft offices before Bucky received the news that he was shipping out. His father humphed, expressed brief approval, and fretted; his mother cried. Rebecca had taken it lightly, but he could tell she was stressed—not least, she confided to him, because his income as an apprentice to a tailor was a major boon to the Barnes family; the twins, Ruth and Lil, were distraught to miss him, but proud; they were seventeen, seemed to somewhat enjoy telling people at school. His aunt and uncle and cousins in Weehawken had sent a charming letter wishing him well. His boss clapped him on the shoulder and lamented how much they’d miss him. His on-again-off-again girlfriend, Lois, asked if they should get married, and when he said he wasn’t sure, she kissed the corner of his mouth and broke it off for good. Several friends and drinking buddies told him they’d see him Over There.

Steve took it pretty stoically, but his heart was clearly broken. He did what he always did when his heart was broken, which was to fold himself up and square his shoulders and turn into a brick wall of stubbornness and misdirection. Bucky didn’t flatter himself to think it was all because Steve would miss him; Steve wanted to join the army so badly, and here Bucky had gotten it without even asking.

“So I expect you’ll get your orders soon,” Steve said, about once a day, primly around his cigarette or over a beer after they both got off work—Steve was working for the movie theater full-time now, illustrating their posters and running the reels, with a side job bussing tables at a shady little cafe on Linden Ave.

But then, one evening in early June while they both sat in the corner of Steve’s shady cafe, now closed, Bucky answered that question in the affirmative, drinking warm beer Steve had smuggled them. Steve’s face had gone curiously blank, his eyebrows had gone up, and then he’d taken a long, deep breath, which rattled going in and coming out, and said, “Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky had said, picking at some hardened food on the table. “I ship out next Tuesday.”

It was June 8th, 1943. The war had been going on in Europe for almost four years; it had been nine months since the attack on Pearl Harbor. It had been a few months since Bucky had returned from basic training in the freezing Wisconsin fields; almost five months since his initial examination after his number came up. He’d passed, of course, being over five feet, but under 6’5”, able to see, over 105 pounds, literate, and in possession of all of his teeth (one was required, a woman in a poorly starched uniform had told him crisply, to have “at least half of them”). Steve, even after a big meal and in his heaviest jacket, had yet to break 91 pounds.

“Well,” said Steve. “That’s exciting.” He sounded about as excited as a man on the way to the gallows; his face was pink and pinched the way it got when he was trying not to say something.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked.

“Why would anything be wrong?”

“Aren’t you going to miss me?”

“I guess, a bit.”

Steve wasn’t smiling. Something in Bucky’s belly was roiling.

“Just a bit?” Bucky leaned towards him, grinning, trying to catch his eye. “I know I’ll miss your scrawny ass to hell.”

“I’m sure you’ll be plenty entertained,” Steve sniffed.

“Can you stop acting like I’m going to Europe to spite you?”

Steve’s face twitched. “When have I ever acted like you’re going to Europe to spite me?”

“Stop. Steve. If I am going, I don’t want to spend the last few days over here getting snipped at by you.” He would remember, much later, that he had said specifically “ _if_ I am going,” even though he’d already known he was. Later, when his was elbow deep in mud and too tired to do anything but wheeze, would sting.

“When have I snipped!”

“Right now!”

“Stop flattering yourself, Buck.”

“Oh, don’t, I don’t want to have one of these--things. I’m sorry the draft office turned you down.”

“I’m gonna try in Manhattanville this weekend,” Steve replied stiffly, not looking at Bucky as he took a swig from the bottle.

“Steve, they’ll tell you no. They’re—not wrong to, it’s not your fault you’ve got asthma bad as hell, but…” He trailed off, feeling empty and stupid; what could he say Steve didn’t know? Steve had been wheezing and coughing and hurting since he’d been born. Steve turned his body more fully away, visibly stung. Bucky, feeling like an almighty asshole, said, “I just wish you wouldn’t act like I’m, I don’t know, wronging you. My number came up.”

“I don’t think you’re wronging me,” Steve told the wall. “I think you’re thinking of Lois.”

Bucky pushed himself back a bit. Steve didn’t get mean often--mad, sure, but not mean--and when he did it was always like a slap. “Don’t do that, c’mon.”

Steve’s leg was bouncing up and down under the table, his eyes fixed on the wall and his face set in the particular kind of consternated blank expression he often put on when he was trying to hide that he was hurt. He took another sip of beer and studiously ignored Bucky.

“ _C’mon_ , Steve, don’t be sore with me, I can’t stand it if I’m leaving in a week and you’re sore with me.”

“I’m not sore with you,” Steve sniffed, still squinting across the darkened room out the window, running the pad of his thumb over the lip of his bottle. His fingers were so thin, Bucky found himself thinking, his hands so small, he was like a doll. He didn’t seem real, suddenly; Bucky couldn’t stand to think of leaving him.

But he did.

Not long after that night at the cafe, he hugged Steve roughly at the World’s Fair, slipped off to try to get lucky with a girl he barely knew, and then he shipped out. He didn’t get that lucky with the girl, just kissed her behind a booth, standing on some electrical cords and feeling her up through he dress, and left hollow and wondering how Steve was taking this latest rejection from the draft board. He was glad he hadn’t followed his first instinct, which was to tell Steve, “See ya, 4F.”

And then he shipped out, and the barge was hell, lurching and overfull and smelling like all the sweat in the world plus puke and piss, and then England was a lot like basic, with less regulation and more drinking. From England they went to Italy, which was mud and walking and giant holes in the ground, and then fighting inland, and composing letters to his parents, to the twins, to Steve and Rebecca that he never sent.

And because he could think ahead, he was in charge of a squad of guys, and because he was nice and didn’t care much if anybody shaved, they didn’t half mind him, and because there was always something to do, the time was going fast, and he’d only sent one letter to Steve and hadn’t gotten one back, but he didn’t have time to worry about it, because they had to keep pushing inland.

Was this really what Steve was so excited for?

Mostly they got into what Bucky’s COs called “skirmishes,” and occasionally what _Stars & Stripes_called “firefights,” and Bucky saw a couple of guys get shot right through the face, which wasn’t as bad as watching a guy get shot somewhere that tore him up but left him breathing, because every big ragged breath the idiot took forced more blood out of him and down his front and into the mud, which was everywhere, and got into everything. Bucky started aiming for the other guys’ temples and hearts, so they wouldn’t die like that, and so they wouldn’t live long enough to shoot his guys so they’d die like that, and he wrote to Becca because he promised her and because she sent him chocolate and _Superman_ books, wrote another letter for Mom and Dad and the twins, and then one day, pretty far inland (always inland), they were trekking through some smelly fuckin’ mud ( _always_ mud), and a bullet whistled past Bucky’s ear and lodged in a skinny tree, and then he realized the trees were absolutely full of guys, not his guys, and he had just enough time to hear somebody yell before the shooting started, and he was trying to hit hands and temples and hearts, because he was good at it, and the guy next to him was dead and the guy on his other side dropped his rifle and put his hands up, and Bucky did the same.

Which is how he ended up at the factory.

At first, the factory was almost a relief. It shouldn’t have been, because it was him and about a hundred other guys shepherded through the woods and down a narrow dirt road, trudging in a wet parody of formation, weaponless and wary. Some walked with their backs straight, their chins out; others slumped downwards, huddled together. Bucky stuck to the front, as among the highest ranking of those captured, and tried to keep his chin up. They walked for two days with a nightfall in the middle, during which they walked slower, but kept going.

Then they got to the factory, and as they stepped through the doors were directed roughly to one of hundreds of cages built into the floor. Bucky could hear the grinding of machinery, and as he reached bottleneck at the massive rolling doors, the kid next to him asked, “How come they’re sorting us like that?”

Bucky gave the kid a long look—he was short and blond, jittery, and something in the crease of his brow did remind Bucky of Steve. But Bucky knew the kid, he had curly hair and a bulky, solid build; he was a private, one of Bucky’s guys, from Pennsylvania and a nervous smart-alec with an ominous “H” on his dog tag.

“They’re just makin’ sure guys that know each other don’t get to stay together,” he said, then added, lowly, “Gimme your dog tag, Litten.”

The kid complied, nervously, and Bucky bent over as if to tie his shoe before lobbing the thing hard out towards the lines of ugly-ass German cars. Better safe than sorry.

They were shepherded through the door not a minute after Bucky straightened up. “Best’a luck, Litten,” he said, and the kid nodded before he was shoved bodily to their right. Bucky was directed to the left, were he was further dragged, shepherded, quickly searched (and the feeling of some ugly masked Kraut’s hand cupping his cash and prizes was not a feeling he’d soon forget), and finally directed into a high, round cage, barely eight feet across, with three other guys inside, all sitting. One was American, Bucky could tell; the other two looked like they’d been there awhile.

“Evening?” he said.

One of them nodded at him. The guard behind him shoved him between the shoulder blades and his knees his the ground. Another man was pushed in right behind Bucky, and then the cage doors closed. For what felt like many more hours—the stupid guards took his watch—they listened to shouting and grunting and doors opening and closing, and Bucky sat shoulder to shoulder with the man who’d entered the cage behind him and tried to count cage doors. 

At long last, when everyone had grown quiet and the last cage door had slammed, Bucky turned his head to look around. He was flanked by Americans; one with a thick, caramel-colored mustache on his right, and on his left, a guy who had to be from the colored regiment Bucky had seen marching with the rest. The other two, looking a good deal more careworn, were slumped on the other side, shoulder to shoulder. One wore the dirty remains of what looked like a British uniform, something specialized, by the badges, and was turning his crimson cap over in his hands. The other wore ragged civvies and was leaned the furthest back, eyes closed as if he were napping.

“How long have you been here?” asked the guy on Bucky’s left, without inflection.

The Brit frowned, and poked the other, who sighed without opening his eyes, “Pas anglais.” So, Bucky surmised, he was French.

“Depuis combien de temps être-vous ici?” the American repeated, his tone the same. The Frenchman arched an eyebrow, and opened one eye imperiously. He looked at the three Americans, then sighed loudly.

“Je m’en fous,” he said, lowly, and sucked his teeth. “Longtemps.”

“What’s that mean?” asked the other American, impatiently.

“A long time,” said the first American, while the Brit curled back his lips and said, “It means he doesn’t give a fuck.”

“That too,” amended the American.

A voice far off called something that sounded like “rue-ee-sign,” then, accent clear and slicing _S_ -sounds into _Z_ s, “SILENCE!”

With a wink, the Frenchman put a finger up to his lips, and settled back again as if he were napping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Bucky "received the news that he was shipping out" and tells Steve his number came up because he was [drafted.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#World_War_II) This is based on [Bucky's serial number.](https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/how-to-decode-a-wwii-army-serial-number)
> 
> -Bucky's run-down of his physical and how he passed it is historically accurate, including the [stipulation that he had be in possession of "at least half" of his teeth.](http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/your-numbers-up)
> 
> -As mentioned briefly in the previous chapter's notes, _Stars and Stripes_ magazine is an [ongoing newsletter for US servicemen.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_Stripes_\(newspaper\))
> 
> -Superman debuted in 1938. Comic books were enormously popular during the Second World War, including with servicemen.
> 
> -Bucky removes Private Litten's dog tag because WWII era dog tags often indicated one's religion, and [the "H" would have indicated Litten was Jewish.](http://www.hakirah.org/Vol15Males.pdf)
> 
> -In my continuing efforts to keep the slang of the period, Bucky calls the Germans "Krauts," which was a commonly used derogatory term for Germans in America before the war, and used extensively by soldiers during. (British servicemen preferred to call the enemy "Jerry" or "Fritz.")
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Pas anglais. - "No English."  
> Depuis combien de temps être-vous ici? - "How long have you been here?"  
> Je m’en fous. Longtemps. - "I don't give a fuck. A long time."  
> The word Bucky thinks sounds like "rue-ee-sign" is _ruhig_ , meaning "silence."


	3. Chapter Two: The Factory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and some racism/standard-issue Nazi bullshit in this chapter. 
> 
> Hover over text not in English to see translations. Translations will also be included in the end notes, along with historical notes.

Later, Bucky wouldn’t be able to recall how long it was before they spoke again. He sat with his back straight, watched the Brit drift off to sleep, watched the two Americans’ eyes rove, listened to a few squeals and howls and the consistent crushing noise of machinery. He wished he had a way to keep time; he tried to count seconds, but kept losing track. He didn’t know how long it was before the American who’d spoken French said, “Well, I’m Gabe.”

“Tais-toi, américain” drawled the Frenchman.

“Ou quoi?” snapped Gabe, then turned to Bucky and the mustache man. He held out his hand. “Gabe Jones. I’m a private, I’m from Georgia.”

There was a long silence. Gabe’s hand hung in the air above their dusty boots, and Bucky, figuring only a fool makes enemies in hell, reached his own hand up to meet it.

“James Barnes,” he said, “from Brooklyn.”

“Pleasure,” said Gabe Jones, shaking Bucky’s hand up and down twice and dropping it. Bucky nodded to him, awkward in the tight space with three pairs of eyes on him. Even the Frenchman was watching.

“And you?” Gabe asked, extending his hand to the mustache man.

“Dugan,” grunted the mustache man, and he nodded once atand Gabe Jones’s hand but didn’t take it. Gabe kept it out, and Bucky, between them, swallowed once. He hadn’t exactly known many—well, guys who looked like Gabe, but he wasn’t like his dad or his uncle, he didn’t hate the guys, just figured, well, people keep to their own. All that. Just like the army. But damned if he wasn’t polite.

“C’mon,” Bucky mumbled, hoping, somehow, despite their shoulders touching, that Gabe wouldn’t hear. “Shake his hand.”

A few years later, when they were bouncing across Europe in that damnable Jeep Steve had somehow acquired, listening to Gabe and Dum-Dum howl with laughter, it would seem like a dream that once Bucky had forced them to shake hands; later, when the two of them traded jokes about the mud and the bombs and the hunger and the women, who were all too skinny over on the Continent, it would be impossible to imagine. Bucky would wonder, in fact, if he’d dreamed it, but he didn’t like to think too hard about what he did and didn’t dream in the factory.

As it was, Dugan grunted and took Gabe’s hand. They shook once, each nodding curtly, and dropped their hands again, settling back so Bucky blocked each from the other’s view. To fill the silence, Bucky turned to the Brit.

“Who’re you?” he asked, trying his level best to sound like they’d all been unexpectedly seated together at a dinner party.

“Falsworth,” said the Brit, crisply. “This fool’s Dernier.”

“His name means ‘last,’” Gabe said.

“And yours,” grunted Dernier, accent thick but words clearly discernible, “means ‘talks-too-much.”

* * *

 

They were put to work; Bucky expected as much. They carried things and chopped wood, picked apart fat ropes that seemed to have been dipped in oil or acid, stacked boxes without labels. They were poked in the arms and the smalls of their backs with rifles, and, once, a boy who looked about fifteen fell down and wouldn’t get back up. They hauled him off to another place, away from the churning groans of the factory, away from everyone, and he didn’t come back. That’s how Bucky learned about what Falsworth called “the isolation ward.”

As far as Bucky ever knew, the place didn’t actually have an official designation. It was just down the hallway, past the last of the cages, away from the doors, the stockyard, any part of the factory Bucky had glimpsed or heard. The boy who fell over didn’t come back; Falsworth noted stiffly that nobody did. The morning after he left, there were whispers that those closest to the end of the hallway had heard screaming, but they couldn’t be substantiated; no one was supposed to talk. In the nighttime, guards marched over the catwalk above the cages, threatening the worst to anyone “chatten.” If you were lucky, it was just a rebuke; unlucky, and you’d get hit. Somebody in the cage next to Bucky got his face busted open with the butt of a rifle. They could hear him groaning into his sleeve all night long.

This was how he came to keep track of the time: wake up being shouted at to do so, work for a few hours, monotonously and anonymously, hard bread and cloudy water, more work until nightfall, back to the cages, more bread and water, try to fall asleep clustered in with Falsworth and Dernier and his Americans. Bucky tried to keep track of days by pulling threads out of his pants, but then they started to fall apart. One night Dernier came back to the cage looking green and clammy; it transpired at length that he’d gotten the utter shit kicked out of him. They all slept standing up that night, so he’d have room to curl up. They did the same when Gabe got a fever, and later Bucky would wonder if the fever was really only a few days after Dernier’s mottled back and brown piss, or if it had been weeks. As it was, Gabe’s skin was warm through his uniform, shoulders pressed to Bucky, and for four days they all stood up at night so Gabe could do something close to lying down. Dugan gave Gabe his water. Bucky gave him his rock hard bread.

The next morning, Bucky thought it was the next morning, but time was different there, he and Gabe stumbled out to chop wood together. Bucky counted steps in the morning, then to sixty as many times as he could before they got fed.

This morning, out in the clear, bright snow, Gabe was shaking and his nose was running continuously; Bucky felt hot just standing next to him. He remembered crouching over Steve, feeling the same fever heat, a hundred times; out in the snow, it felt as if Steve had always been that way, burrowed in Mrs. R’s ratty quilt, red and shuddering and sweating hard.

“Sit down,” he told Gabe, when they got to the woodpile.

“Pardon me?”

“You’re sick,” Bucky ground out, wondering if the snow was too dirty to eat, “so just sit. I’ll cover for you. Hell, snow might help your fever.”

Gabe looked at him for a long moment then, his overbright eyes focusing with uncomfortable intensity on Bucky’s face, before he nodded and said, “Thank you, James.”

“Bucky,” he said, hoisting his axe up over his shoulder and wishing doing so didn’t make his chest ache. “S’an old nickname, but it’s all anybody ever called me at home.”

“Sounds like a name for a squirrel,” Gabe murmured, sinking to the ground to lean against a tree, eyes drifting closed, nose still running constantly even as Gabe dragged his filthy, snot-encrusted sleeves over his face.

“Gee,” said Bucky, and set to work.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before they were interrupted, and his first thought was _breakfast_ , and then it was definitely not breakfast. Someone was shouting at Gabe to get up, and Gabe was attempting to do so.

“Stop,” Bucky said, whirling around and immediately making eye contact with the sight of a pistol.

“Lass es fallen!” snapped the man holding it, who Bucky hazily focused on and wondered why these fuckers never took their ugly ass masks off.

“I don’t speak German, dumbass,” Bucky said, and the faceless man holding the Luger drew it back and hit Bucky hard across the face with it. It stung so badly Bucky saw stars, and he felt a crack behind his lip and his knees getting wet in the snow.

“James, don’t,” he heard Gabe saying, and the mask fucker was still shouting, and all Bucky knew was that he had to stand back up. He was not the champion of hand to hand combat in the back alleys of East Flatbush for nothing, and he had not spent twenty years back to back with Steve Rogers, getting their kidneys punched and their ribs bruised and their lips split, to lose a fight. The gun came down on his head again, hitting him just above the eyebrow, and he rocked backwards, then blindly stumbled to his feet, slipping in the snow.

“GET DOWN!” hollered the no-face-asshole and Gabe at the same time, and Bucky reoriented himself and staggered backwards, put his hands up in the air—he didn’t save anybody’s life by dying just now—but kept his back straight, focused on Gabe, now on his feet, eyes wide and wet, and the masked prick, whose Luger was still even with Bucky’s face.

As they stared at each other, the guard suddenly lowered the luger, passed it from his right hand to his left, and held it out to Bucky. His right hand immediately dropped to his waist, where Bucky could see another Luger holstered there. _Christ, these Krauts and their shiny guns._

He focused dizzily on the end of the Luger extended to him, ignoring the loose grind of what he knew to be several broken teeth floating in his clenched jaw. He didn’t understand. He glanced at Gabe, who clearly didn’t either.

“Take it,” said the voice behind the ugly mask, _tek it_ , and Bucky did so, slowly, dumbly. The guard released the first pistol and immediately withdrew the second.

“Are we dueling?” Bucky asked. He heard Gabe’s ragged breath briefly peter into something like a sigh.

“One shot left,” drawled the mask, “in zis gun. You have understand?”

For a wild second, the voice sounded almost earnest, as though the man behind the mask was genuinely concerned Bucky wouldn’t follow his words. Bucky nodded once, felt the movement dislodge blood in his gums.

“You shoot freund here. Or I shoot both.”

It took a moment for the absurdity of this pronouncement to fully reach Bucky, to settle in the disrupted snow and mud between him and Gabe and the faceless guard. The silence seemed to expand, to press claustrophobically against Bucky’s throat. Where was everyone else? Was this real?

“Good blood,” added the mask, almost dryly, gesturing at Bucky with the Luger. “Not him.”

Bucky looked at Gabe then, who was staring at him fixedly, his mouth a perfectly thin line. Clammy and snotty though he was, his face was expressionless, his eyes clear and blank. He didn’t make any indication he’d met Bucky’s glance. Bucky swallowed and looked back at the guard.

“Fuck off,” he said.

“One chance,” said the mask.

Bucky had gotten really very good at shooting guys right between the eyes. His famously precise eyesight was serving him well out here, and he had a natural taste for the way his body and a well-made gun could act in tandem to make the perfect shot in the perfect moment. The gun in his hands was a good one, he knew; he saw himself lining up the shot, shattering the glass eyehole of the mask, running hard into the woods.

Some blood dripped into his eye.

He fired the gun into the ground.

The sound immediately drew attention, and Bucky’s vision swam dangerously with the red that had fallen from his eyebrow, and then strong, warm, well-fed hands were forcing his arms behind his back and a voice was shouting in the ear that was still ringing from the gunshow, and he allowed himself to be frog-marched back towards the factory, Gabe similarly bound behind him. Every pair of eyes followed them inside, out of the blinding snowlight into the cool, foul-smelling dark of the factory.

They marched up the line, and when they reached the cage that still smelled like poor Gabe’s puke, he was deposited inside. The man marching with Bucky kept walking; Bucky twisted his head, saw Gabe’s face, just a blur in the dark, and then turned just in time to realize that he was being taken past the doors nobody came back out of.

Well. Fuck.

Later, much, much later, Bucky would deny it even to himself, but his first thought when they’d dragged him through the door was that hell, at least he might get some rest being dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Not much to note here, besides some notes on the prison. _The First Avenger_ is incredibly vague on what's going on at the factory, so I've invented a history for it myself, and tried to tie it to the history of German POW camps during the war. You can read more about the experiences of American POWs in Germany [here](http://guestsofthethirdreich.org/camp-life/).
> 
> -I made Dugan the American with the most obvious residual racism because he's the one who asks Morita if they're "taking everyone." To be honest, the fact that Gabe is the only black man we see in the prison in TFA is pretty confusing, seeing as the US Army [remained segregated until after the war.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9981) Part of the reason I emphasized that Bucky & the 107th were captured in Italy in the last chapter is because [black regiments served with distinction](http://www.historynet.com/how-the-buffalo-soldiers-helped-turn-the-tide-in-italy-during-world-war-ii.htm) in Italy during the second half of 1943.
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Tais-tois, américaine - "Shut up, American."  
> Oui quoi? - "Or what?"  
> Chatten - "chatting"  
> Lass es fallen! - "Drop it!" (Bucky is exhausted, and forgets he is holding an axe.)  
> Freund - "friend"


	4. Chapter Three: The Isolation Ward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medical torture described ahoy! And just regular torture. Be warned.

He didn’t get any rest. He did not—would never, and that was probably good—remember what happened between walking through the high doors and talking to Arnim Zola. He was bleeding, and somebody hit him again, very hard, on the jaw. Time slid around a little, everything leaking, and then he was in a chair, head swimming painfully, a small man in front of him in glasses.

He wanted to say, “What the fuck.”

He said, “Waaasssuhff’ck.” 

“Don’t try to talk just now, Sergeant Barnes,” drawled the round little man in front of him; Bucky could only barely fucking see. His head hurt dully; his jaw was throbbing. He could feel his heartbeat in his jaw. That wasn’t normal, was it?

He squinted at the man in front of him. He had an accent, but he was speaking English. Bucky’s shoulders hurt. His hands were behind him. Handcuffed? Something.

His mouth hurt a lot.

“Na’gonna tell you shit,” he mumbled, and felt something shift in the area of his upper molars that definitely wasn’t supposed to move.

“I haven’t asked you anything, Sergeant Barnes,” the little round man said pleasantly, and Bucky felt his head lolling a little bit. There was definitely something he was supposed to say. Right? How did this guy know his name? “I’m simply impressed with you.”

That didn’t make any fucking sense.

“We’re going to be great friends, you and I,” the little man said, and his hand caught the side of Bucky’s face that wasn’t shattered. Bucky spat at him. It was unimpressive; just let a fat glob of bloody spit out onto the man’s pale little hand.

What is it you’re supposed to say?

Something, something, something. Nothing more, boys. What was it. What. Something, something, something. Name, date, and. No. Name, date. No—name, _rank_ , serial number. That was it. He’d already said a couple of things that weren’t that. What now?

“That wasn’t very polite,” said the man mildly, withdrawing a handkerchief and delicately cleaning his own hand, then Bucky’s chin, where the bloody spit was dripping pitifully onto his lap.

Name, rank, and serial number. James Barnes, sergeant, the little man knew that. Serial number. On the dog tags. He’d learned it fast; he’d always been fast with numbers. The beginning numbers meant he was from New York. Did the little man know that? Would they use it to go back and find—find Mom and Dad, find Becca and the twins? No, that didn’t make any sense. The man’s hand was still on his chin.

Three two. From New York. Three two five five seven zero three eight. He’d found it easy to remember. He liked numbers.

“Thr’two. Fi-fi-seven-oh-three. Eight.”

“You’re not much use to anyone with this broken jaw, are you, liebling?”

Is that why his mouth hurt so much?

Three-two-five-five-seven-oh-three-eight. James Barnes, Sergeant. Maybe if he just thought it.

“Not to worry,” said the little round man, “I have a plan.” And Bucky felt the tiniest sting in his neck, and he thought it was funny that he felt it on top of all the other pain, like a little tiny cherry atop the heaps and layers of pain already there, and then he was unconscious for real this time.

 

When he woke up, he was lying down.

Everything was quiet, and cool. His body ached all over, like he’d had the flu. He tried to stretch, and found he couldn’t; his arms and legs were too heavy. Something was making them heavy. What. What was that.

He jerked, hard. It made his chest hurt, like he didn’t have enough air. And his ankles and wrists were held down. They were. Strapped down. Oh, god. Oh, _Christ_.

He wriggled painfully, to no avail. His whole body echoed and shuddered with pain, like he’d been hollowed out. What the fuck happened. What the fuck happened. Where was—Steve? Fever. No. Gabe.

Gabe. Snow. The man with the pistol. The little round man. _I have a plan_. Broken jaw. His jaw was broken, except.

Except, it definitely wasn’t.

He shifted his jaw from side to side carefully. It twinged a little, but it was definitely healed. It wasn’t even tender. It—how—

How long had he _been_ here?

“Hey,” he said, so quietly he startled himself, his voice so thready and weak and strained. He swallowed and tried again. “Hey?”

Had he been shouting?

He wriggled again, harder, and found himself thoroughly held down. Not good. Nothing hurt but everything ached. He felt his teeth with his tongue nervously. They were all in place. Everything felt right; he couldn’t even taste any blood. But the guard hit his face with the gun. He remembered that, it was the _last_ thing he remembered, out in the snow—or, second to last, the little man after that. The handkerchief and the spit. How was his jaw healed?

“Hey!” he called, and his voice cracked painfully, like he’d lost it. Had he yelled that much?

A shadow fell over him, and it took his eyes a moment to focus on the face of the little round man from before. He looked like an owl. He looked inordinately pleased with himself.

“Let’s try for a proper introduction, Sergeant,” he said, lightly, as if Bucky had arrived a little late to his tea party. Bucky wished he had the angle to spit.

“How long have I been here?” he growled, then cursed himself. Name, rank, serial number. That was the _rule_.

“Are the accommodations not to your satisfaction?” said the little man drolly, a strange smile on his face. His accent was different from the others. His eyes were close together and clear and. Hungry.

Bucky remembered the hand on his face and shuddered.

“How long,” he rasped.

The owl man looked at his watch. Bucky remembered the masked guard taking his watch, on his way into the cage that first night in the factory, and it felt like years ago. Maybe it _was_.

“Two days now,” drawled the little man. “Now, Sergeant Barnes, _where_ are my manners! I am Arnim Zola, it is a pleasure. I’d shake your hand, but. Well.”

He smiled and patted Bucky’s forearm avuncularly. Bucky tried to wrench away, and couldn’t. Arnim Zola chuckled again.

“Best to stay lying down, Sergeant,” he said, his hand not leaving Bucky’s forearm. “You’ve got a lot of work to do. Best to rest up.”

“I’m not. Telling you. _Shit_ ,” Bucky ground out, fingers twitching against the table, feeling his carpal bones protest already at the pressure from the cuffs.

“I haven’t asked you to tell me anything, liebling,” Zola said, “though I find that _loyalty_ of yours—very touching. Very good.”

Bucky’s chest felt hollow and swooping, like he’d missed stairs and couldn’t stop falling. He wished he could sit up; he wished he could see more of the room he was in. Why was this—why was Zola speaking this way? How could his jaw be better in two days?

“ _Fuck_ you,” Bucky spat, because that was a good reply, to Nazis, in general.

“This loyalty, this stubbornness, it’ll serve you well, Sergeant.”

“I don’t have any fucking loyalty to you Krauts,” Bucky grunted, trying to twitch his body away from Zola’s flat, still hand, resting lightly on top of his arm.

“I’m Swiss, actually,” Zola said, lightly, and then he pulled a dark cloth from his pocket and fit it tightly over Bucky’s eyes. Before Bucky could protest, another cloth went into his mouth.

He inhaled sharply and tried to thrash, but couldn’t. Zola chuckled and tutted, and told him to hold still. “We are getting very close,” he said, and put another needle into Bucky’s neck.

Bucky waited to pass out, but he didn’t. Something started to hurt unbearably in his neck, down to his sternum. He tried to scream and the handkerchief blocked it, and then he _did_ pass out.

 

He woke up, and Zola was there again. Bucky spat at him. Zola called him a funny little boy. He did a test on Bucky’s hands and feet and knees, trying to test their reflexes while he was held down. He drew Bucky’s blood. Bucky tried to thrash away and Zola tutted, put down the needle, and with an air of a man too busy and important for this shit, cupped Bucky’s jaw to close it and used his spare hand to pinch his nose until Bucky slipped away.

 

He woke up again, and Zola was examining the inside of his mouth. He gagged, and then bit the fat fingers.

“Be nice, liebling,” Zola said, “we need each other.”

Another needle in the neck.

 

He woke up, and Zola was directing someone in German. A doctor type, face covered. Always in masks, these fuckers. The doctor stepped forward, cupped Bucky’s hand, and with sudden ruthless efficiency, broke Bucky’s forefinger as easily as if it were a pencil.

“Now we start the clock,” said Zola cheerfully, while Bucky howled.

 

The finger seemed to set too fast. Was he losing time? He was so hungry his body felt hollow and like it was crunching in on itself, crushed. How long had it been?

Zola bustled in, stood over him. “Sorry, sorry, liebling,” he said, and patted Bucky’s cheek. “Have to wait. Poor liebling. So strong and brave.”

Bucky ground his teeth, licked his grubby lips.

“Something to say?”

Bucky thought about what to say.

32557308.

“Three-two-five-five-seven-three-oh-eight.”

“Is that all?”

 _You bet your ugly ass it is_.

Zola sighed, and put the needle back in his neck.

 

He woke up bent at an odd angle; one of the masked German doctors was tipping lukewarm broth into his mouth. He didn’t care how awful it felt; it was _food_. It was liquid. He could’ve drunk it forever.

It went away too soon.

“We’re going to get to know each other quite soon, liebling,” said a voice, and Bucky winced. The cloth came back over his eyes, and the broth turned sour fast in his belly as he heard a sound like a bad plug sparking.

 

He yelled until he couldn’t anymore.

 

He woke up, dizzy, shaking, and drenched in the crotch area. His dick and thighs itched. Had he— _Jesus_ , he’d pissed.

“Poor liebling,” said a voice above him, “so soon I can help you.”

Another needle, and while he floated, something was fitted around his head. Things went hot blue, then black.

 

He woke up, and didn’t need to be able to see to know he could feel coolness, air, _hands_ , on, on, no, NO, _in_ his belly, INSIDE, and he started to scream.

 

He woke up, and his stomach hurt beyond words. His head hurt. Someone was putting water on him. Just cold water, on a cloth, on his belly. He knew that. He used to do that. He used to do that, in another country, for Steve Rogers, who was small and hot and shaking and dying, thrashing in his mother’s bed begging Bucky to kill the animals inside the wall, the eyes, Bucky, and Bucky said, “You’re delirious, Steve-o, it’s okay,” the same way, but back then he’d been able to stand up, he hadn’t felt fat heavy sutures in his belly. When he was sick, Mama rubbed his belly, sang him a song. She did that for him and Becca, when they were small, together in the bed so hot with shared fever, and for the twins later. She’d do it now, if she were here, he thought. She would. She’d do it for him now, if he asked. The water on his forehead felt nice. It was cold and he was hot, like Steve was hot in the bed the day with the snow and the fever, and he patted Steve’s forehead like a mama would, like his Mama did when he had bad fevers, he wanted to bury himself in the feeling of the water like a quilt Mama made for Steve to cocoon as his fever climbed the walls and tricked him into seeing things that weren’t there.

How’s the song go.

Name. Name, rank, serial number. _James Barnes, sergeant, 32557308?_

“Liebling,” chided a voice.

 

He woke up, alone. He tried to yell. He succeeded. He yelled for a long, long time, and nobody came. The ceiling dripped lower.

 

He woke up. Something hurt too much to see. The bad plug sound was back. Something smelled burnt and sick. He wanted his mother to come.

 

He woke up. Somebody said “liebling.” He said, “James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557308.” He tried, anyways.

 

He woke up, alone. He kept saying his song. James-Barnes. Ser-geant. Three-two-five. Five-five-seven. Three-oh-eight. He stared at the ceiling and wondered if it was getting closer.

 

He woke up because something hurt. He wanted the needle in his neck back. James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557308. Arnim Zola was talking in his ear, and many things hurt. James Barnes, Sergeant, 32557308. He wished the ceiling would come a little closer. Then he could hear the voices there. He hoped they were his mom.

 

He woke up. Something was unbearably loud nearby. Hard to say where, or why. He didn’t hear things from outside very often, not like this, not lots of voices, not _booms_. Who was out there?

Somebody was coming. Bucky kept saying his song. Somebody was coming fast, and then they stopped. Footsteps. He heard so many footsteps, these days. Coming and going. Bring the needle. Liebling.

James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557308. Say your song, liebling.

Somebody was talking. Different voice, different shape. Just say your song. Just stay down here.

“Oh, my god,” said somebody up top. “Bucky.”

That’s me. Hey. That’s me.

Is that me? You mean me? Is that me?

“It’s me,” said the big shape. “It’s Steve.”

Steve. _Steve_. Yellow. Yellow hair, big nose, fat caterpillar eyebrows. Crooked teeth, pink mouth, laughing, coughing. Smelled like charcoal, all the time, smelled like soap and charcoal, yellow hair and big nose, laughing and coughing, _Steve_. Steve. Steve. Back home. Steve couldn’t be here, but Steve was here, he was, his hands were on Bucky, on his shoulders, they were so fucking _warm_.

“ _Steve_.”

And it was. It was. Yellow hair, under a helmet, big fat eyebrows. Floating there, Steve’s face, right there, he smelled the same. Like leather and dirt and powder, but like Steve underneath. The charcoal smell, the scrubby soap smell. His voice was the same. It was, somehow, impossibly, Steve.

“Come on,” Steve said, and he was hoisting Bucky up, and Bucky was so dizzy and felt his brain and stomach rearrange themselves and slosh horribly, and his legs didn’t want to hold him, and Steve was catching him, and it felt—

“Steve.”

A hand came up again, and touched his face, for just a second, but it was there, it was definitely really there, even if Steve was—was not. Not the right. What.

He wondered if he were gonna be sick. He wondered if he was dream-dying. Death dreaming. Couldn’t it be warmer.

“I thought you were dead,” said the voice that was connected to the hand on his shoulder and the arm holding him up and the face that was Steve’s but not quite.

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky whispered, instead of throwing up.   

Had _he_ gotten smaller? Why—what—

Steve—was it Steve? Was it—was it a dream, or a trick? Steve. It _smelled_ like Steve. Steve was looking around, and holding him up. He wanted this thing that sounded like Steve to let go. He wanted—he wanted—

“Come on,” said Steve, and started to drag him. Bucky resisted the urge to dig in his heels, and the voice was Steve, and the arms were around him, and they were Steve’s, somehow, they moved right, or he was so tired, and he tucked himself underneath them. For a moment. Till they cleared the door. Because.

Because, he figured, if they got out of the door, then he’d know this wasn’t a dream.

 

“What happened to you?”

“I joined the Army!”

 _What the fuck_.

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

_Were they messing around with you, too?_

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

After they got out the door, and it wasn’t a dream, probably, Steve dragged him up out of the factory, up a catwalk, not the way he knew. Was he above the cages? Christ, everything hurt. He wished Steve would stop trying to grab him. Everything was exceptionally loud. The factory below them was on fire—and Falsworth used to laugh and say he was going to rig this place to blow, and oh _Christ_ , were they still in there? Were they all down in those cages, burning up?

His stomach contracted; his nose filled with the sick burning smell he’d so often gone heady with on the table, before, _liebling_ , and the sparking noise, _they’re all down there_ —!

“Captain America!”

_The fuck does that mean?_

But he forced himself upwards, cramping stomach roiling, to look across the catwalk, were he saw two men coming towards them, over the fire—a tall one he didn’t know, and. _Shit shit shit._ Arnim-Zola. Zola looked—in his hat, his overcoat, holding the railing like Bucky was. He looked. Rumpled. Almost _small_. Bucky tried to stand up all the way.

“I am a great fan of your films!” yelled the other man, and Bucky squinted at him, wondering what in the hell that meant. His hands twitched on the railing. _Stand up straight_ , he thought, and couldn’t.

“So,” continued the stranger, walking across the catwalk, and Steve walking to meet him, _do these two know each other_ , “Dr. Erskine managed it after all.” _Where’ve I heard that name?_ “Not exactly an improvement, but still impressive.” There was something wrong with the man’s eyes; as he got closer, Bucky could see deep pockets of red beneath them. His teeth seemed too long. Was it just the fire?

Steve, apparently not concerned either way, strode another step forward and punched the guy hard in the face.

Yeah. Okay. So it really was Steve.

“You’ve got no idea,” Steve growled.

Neither, really, did Bucky.

“Haven’t I?”

Is he _melting_?

He punched Steve, then, and Steve went flying, but not a moment later had—Jesus, kicked the guy, with both feet, in the chest, and was scrambling back towards Bucky, and then Zola was moving and the catwalk was pulling apart. Bucky wished his legs would move.

The man was shouting some more, but Bucky couldn’t hear over the din, and then it didn’t matter, because, because. Oh Jesus. He was taking off a. A mask.

 _Always with the masks, these fuckers_.

But it. _Wasn’t_. It wasn’t a mask. It was red. Underneath. It was red underneath, he was—peeling—peeling off his _skin_ —

Bucky’s knees weren’t holding him right. They felt like water. They felt broken. The noise from the mask-not-a- _mask_ was stretchy and awful, and then instead of a face there was a shining red-skull-head, without a nose, eyes sunken, mouth wrong. Bucky’s stomach lurched. He heard Steve’s feet shuffle next to him.

“You don’t have one of those, do you?” he mumbled.

He didn’t want Steve to rip off his face.

The skull was talking. His skin was flying into the fire, but Bucky couldn’t really follow it. This was a dream—surely. His legs were water, and hurting, his chest was hurting, his eyes were swimming. Zola was moving, moving away, but he could still see them. He could _see_ them. Zola was right there, next to the man with the peeled off face. Was he going to do that to Bucky next? _Hold still, liebling, this’ll sting_ …

“Then how come you’re running!” he heard Steve shout to his right.

 _Because he’s going to hurt us, Steve_ , he thought, wildly.

But then there was a lot more fire, a lot more noise, and Steve was shepherding him upwards, to a narrow staircase to bring them further from the fire. Bucky was vaulting up, barely able to feel his legs now, dragging himself up, and then they’re so high it’s dizzy, and Steve’s brilliant plan was. A gantry. A very thin. Gantry. Above it all, the whole fire, all the cages burning up.

It’s that or nothing, Barnes.

(“It’s this or nothing, Bucky,” Mama cooed, when he whined about the soup, tickling his neck as she goes, laughing; “it’s this or nothing, Buck,” Steve grinned, shrugging inside his lumpy jacket, when he had failed to secure dates for their movie night. It’s not so bad.)

“C’mon,” Steve said, “one at a time,” and his hand landed on Bucky’s back, helped him over the railing and onto the gantry. It was too thin to stand normally on; he had to angle his body forward and take small steps. He was so sure it would fall out from under him, every step shaking the metal beneath him. He could feel Steve’s eyes on him, and the heat from below, pulling and billowing and Christ, a tilt to the wrong direction and—

Just walk, Barnes, he thought, and then the railing was there, the other side, and the whole thing was shaking like all hell, the gantry was dropping beneath him, he wasn’t imagining it, and his legs for the first time took action without his directing them, and he leapt hard for the railing, caught it at rib level and let out a grunt of pain while he heard Steve sort of shapelessly yelling behind him. He swung himself over, felt the real supported ground beneath his feet, and swallowed the nausea roiling up his throat. He propped his chin on the railing, peered across the smoke to Steve, whose face was a nervous smudge.

“Gotta be a rope or something!” he hollered, making no move to look. His head was so heavy. Everything was shaking. Was the building coming down? Steve. Steve had to come.

“Go, just go! Get out of here!” Steve yelled across to him, and the fire was rising like floodwater beneath them, and Bucky could smell the burnt skin and Steve looked small again among it.

“No!” he heard himself screaming back. “Not without you!”

That’s how it had always been.

Steve was backing up. Why was he doing _that_? Did he. Did he see a way?

He was _running_. Christ, Steve, you can’t jump it—

And then the idiot did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Not much to note here. Bucky's serial number is, of course, from the films, but in the films he only gives the first five digits. Historically, his would have been eight digits long. The additional three are from the _First Avenger_ tie-in comic, a [truly artful panel of which can be found here](https://78.media.tumblr.com/58e686339b703275212f5e23a84ef15a/tumblr_n6s631EWcf1qfo97ko1_1280.png).
> 
> -The old "name, rank, and serial number" is not, as is commonly supposed from TV and films, a refrain to repeat during interrogation; it is actually [the specific information to which a captor is entitled](https://people.howstuffworks.com/rules-of-war3.htm), as stipulated in the Geneva Convention. Insofar as I can tell, this particular set of rules didn't enter the Geneva Convention until 1949, making Bucky's reliance on it here potentially anachronistic, but I kept it in as (a) I believe I have read that servicemen were still trained to divulge only this information before 1949, and (b) it's in TFA.
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Liebling - "darling"


	5. Chapter Four: The Howling Commando

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains art from the incredible [Jessie Lucid!](lucidnancyboy.tumblr.com)
> 
> Warning for intrusive thoughts of a sexually aggressive nature in this chapter.

Later, Bucky would have to be informed what exactly happened after Steve did that. It went something like this: he had dragged Steve by the smoldering jacket down the catwalk, Steve’s hair smoking and skin melting, Steve’s mouth making one long howl. They’d tumbled out of a fire escape, hit the ground, and Bucky had been helped to his feet by a sprightly stranger who said, “Jesus, what happened to your friend?”

Somebody behind the stranger had shouted, “Fresno, that’s the one busted us out,” and then people were trying to move Steve, whose skin was blistering and hot and who was screaming, but everybody was, and somebody else was saying “Barnes” again and again, and then it was Dernier, _fucking_ Dernier, shaking his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, and the next thing Bucky was quite aware of he was in the back of a car, scrunched to one side while Steve was splayed out with his boots in Bucky’s lap.

“He was on fire,” Bucky said mildly.

“Good to see you alive, mate,” said someone who, after a moment, Bucky realized was Falsworth.

“You—you’re _not_ on fire,” said Bucky dumbly.

“’Fraid not!” shouted a voice from the front, and good Christ, it was Dugan, with Gabe Jones at his side. Jones was twisting to get a good look at Steve’s burnt chest.

“Hi,” he said, tapping Bucky’s knee, his eyes still on Steve, whose yelling had subsided into something more like ragged yelping. It was worse.

“Hi,” said Bucky, and then he put his head onto the seat back, and closed his eyes, and he was going to open them again, in just a moment, as soon as Steve stopped making that awful noise.

 

When he opened his eyes again, everything was very quiet. He could hear wind in trees, and birdsong. He was sitting up. He could move. He could move. He could.

Steve. Jesus Christ, Steve.

He opened his eyes. He was in a car. He was in a car, the car, and the air was cool around him. He could hear birds and voices. He opened his mouth, and coughed very hard. His throat felt like it had been scraped raw. Which, of course. The fire; the smoke.

He finished coughing and kicked the car door open, and in so doing almost stepped on someone. People were sleeping on the ground in little lumps all around, others were sitting up, huddled together. Bucky thought he knew some of them; he spotted a rumbled blond head he thought might be the Litten kid’s.

Smiling a little, he clambered out of the car, and looked behind it, where he saw a familiar blond head, only to realize with a jolt that Steve was _sitting down_ to be that tall. He hurried over, tried to ignore the way his legs shook.    

“Hi,” he said, nudging Steve’s shoulder. Steve was huddled with the man who’d picked them up before, and Dugan, Gabe, Dernier, and Falsworth. Steve’s skin was smooth, like he hadn’t been on fire. Like his jaw, before. That. He wasn’t going to think about that. The others looked pretty battered.

“Hi yourself,” said Steve, softly, and then said, “you guys said you know Buck?”

They all nodded except the Asian-looking one, who stuck a hand out and said, “Jim Morita.”

“Hi,” said Bucky, annoyed that his voice was so hoarse and brittle. He dropped Jim Morita’s hand and looked around, taking in the huddled clumps of sleeping or sitting men, the smell of a few small fires.

“Everybody got out,” he said, wonderingly.

“This one got everyone out,” said Gabe quietly, nodding to Steve, who looked down quickly.

“I didn’t know you knew the famous Captain America, Barnes,” said Dugan heartily.

“I didn’t either,” he said honestly. Steve was pink. Somewhere, someone belched momentously, and several people laughed.

“So, what’s the plan, Captain America?” Bucky asked, nudging his friend in the shoulder.

“Well,” said Steve, “I was thinking we could get the fuck out of Austria first.”

 

Getting the fuck out of Austria, by and large, meant walking. A lot. Austria and Italy were next to each other, which Bucky knew. What he didn’t know was that the only way to get between them, when one was a sizable cluster of Americans ass-deep in Allied territory, was to walk through the woods for a very long time.

“You are so lucky,” Gabe said to Steve, about fifty times, “that I can actually read your map.”

“I can read my map,” Steve said, every time, but he let Gabe carry it.

 

They walked for about five days. They stopped when people fell over, and at night to sleep a few hours. Dernier, Falsworth, Dugan, Morita, and Gabe stayed near the front, with Steve, and Bucky. Bucky got the impression Steve didn’t want to put more than a few feet between them. He was alright with that, really. He kept thinking if he blinked, Steve would snap back to his old size, or vanish altogether; he kept thinking this was all a weird dream. _Wake up, liebling. James Barnes, sergeant, 32557308_.

The walking helped. It was solid, and rhythmic, and kept his feet solid on the ground. It was moving, going forward, one at a time. It worked. He and Steve talked a bit. He learned why Steve was so fucking big.

“You’re an _idiot_ ,” he told him, flatly, when Steve explained.

“You knew that,” Steve protested, smiling like Bucky hadn’t seen him smile in years.

It was late November, 1943. The war, though they didn’t know it yet, was more than half over. In Berlin, the Allied strategic bombing campaign was racking up heavy casualties; the day before, the wreck of an opera house had made the papers, and people’s homes were leveled. South of Rome, the heavy rain was delaying the Allied advance into Italy was letting up, and slowly the country was crumpling like thick paper under the combined pressure of the invasion, taking bombs from the Luftwaffe and the Allies both. In two days, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin would meet in Iran and determine the fate of the world. At home, Ruth had just had her first date with the man she’d one day marry, Lillian was completing her first semester of college, Becca had just received a promotion at her factory, and rationing was beginning to take a heavier toll. The first ever _Captain America_ comic would be printed in six weeks. The world premiere of _Casablanca_ was that day.

They didn’t know any of that, then. Bucky didn’t even know the date. They knew the sound the ground made when they walked, the smell of the wet tries, the line Gabe drew on their map, and that they were walking together.

 

“Absolutely no fucking way.”

“C’mon.”

“They won’t say yes. Not the guys and not Phillips.”

“Come _on_ ,” Steve whined, stealing the cigarette from between Bucky’s fingers and taking a long drag. The movement was so familiar it jarred Bucky; Steve had been doing that since they were kids, waiting until Bucky’s fingers relaxed and diving in to steal a drag. He didn’t cough, though, after his first. Because. Oh right. Because he didn’t cough, anymore.

Bucky sighed. They had been back at their base in London for two days, now; all the men who’d tramped in from the factory had been brought out as high priority, about as soon as they were washed and treated for their injuries. The last of the burned patches of Steve’s skin were clear now, and Bucky had eaten his first full meal in weeks. He’d eaten so much, in fact, that Steve had tutted he’d be sick, and then some more after, and act which, according to Dugan, constituted hearty resistance to the Nazi machine.

“Fuck ’em!” Morita had chorused, and they’d agreed broadly that their best contribution to the Allied cause, at the moment, was to eat and drink as much as they could without vomitingsicking it back up. Bucky was winning.

Now Steve was trying to tell him that Phillips, Steve’s CO, wanted to put together a unit just for wiping out the bases Steve had seen on the map in the factory, something elite. Something the daring, nigh-unkillable Captain America was suited for, perhaps even more than the geeky USO shows.

Which Bucky would kill to see, incidentally. Steve said no way.

“And I want the unit to be, well, you,” Steve had said, “and Gabe and Dugan, Morita, Dernier, and Falsworth. Us seven. And Peggy and Howard, but we’ll be on the ground.”

And Bucky had said: “Absolutely no fucking way.” And Steve had taken his cigarette.

Bucky took it back, and took a long draw. They were outside a shabby little pub in southeast London, leaning on the grimly old stones.

“Well, I’m not doing it if I can’t pick my team,” Steve said, for all the world like this was a game of stickball out behind Bucky’s apartment, like the “teams” were all seven and eight year old boys in knee pants, like the biggest risk they were up against was Steve getting walloped in the eye with the ball, or the stick, which he had, more than once. Bucky used to tell him to stop taking “keep your eye on the ball” so literally.

“And Phillips listened to that?”

“There isn’t exactly anybody else jumpin’ up to lead the unit,” Steve admitted. Bucky looked at him for a minute, knowing by the redness at the tips of Steve’s ears alone that he hadn’t told the full story. “Okay, and Peggy stood up for me. And Howard.”

“ _Theeere_ it is,” said Bucky, smiling, and he let Steve snatch the cigarette back.

They smoked in silence for a moment, passing the cigarette between them wordlessly. It was an easy pattern, and Bucky was grateful for it. It was nice to be normal, to do something just the same as he’d done it a year ago, and four years ago, and ten years ago. Well. Almost. With a bit less coughing. A lot less coughing, actually. Bucky was the one with the cough. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, and it was simple, even if Bucky’s skin still seemed to vibrate all the time, now.

“They’ll tell you no, though,” Bucky said, after a moment. “The guys. They don’t want to go back.”

 _I don’t want to go back_ , Bucky almost added, and didn’t, because he didn’t want to look like a coward.

“That’s okay,” Steve said mildly. “But I think they might. They’re a good group of guys.”

Bucky hummed in assent, and passed Steve the cigarette butt to finish it off. He turned as he took it, to look at Bucky fully, and it was so strange to have Steve looking _down_ to his face, however slightly. Bucky had loved that canted up chin for so many years.

“Gabe told me,” he said quietly, “what you did for him. Jesus, Buck. What happened.”

Bucky hated What Happened.

Bucky’s fingers stiffened, and the air in his nose and lungs got colder, and too tight. He didn’t want to know what Gabe told Steve. He didn’t want Steve to know anything that Had Happened to Him. For a few reasons, chief among them that he had no desire to ever think about any of it again. But also. Well.

The thing was this: What Had Happened to Bucky involved his jaw and finger being broken, and his belly being cut open, and his skin on fire. And the _thing_ was this: Bucky’s belly was smooth and unblemished, beyond his appendectomy scar from when he was eleven. Bucky’s jaw was as it always was, and his teeth were all in place. The fingernails he _knew_ had been pulled off were gone. There weren’t even any marks on his neck, from the needles.

But it had _happened_. Bucky knew it, he could still feel it when he lay still enough, in the dark. He knew it, but. But he’d only been in the “isolation ward” for nine days. He’d only been in the factory at all for four weeks. Twenty-nine days, by every count, including the Army’s, and Gabe’s, and everyone’s, _everyone’s_. That wasn’t enough _time_ for him to grow new fingernails.

But he could still feel them sliding out of the nail bed, if he thought about it. He could _feel_ it, and it wasn’t possible, and he didn’t know what to do.

“And I’m proud of you,” Steve was saying. Bucky felt himself flush, and dug his teeth into his tongue. _Listen to Steve, moron._ “And I understand, Buck, if you don’t want to come. I do.”

Bucky pushed himself off the wall, onto the balls of his feet. He spun around, looked at Steve, at the wall behind him, the window, with a poster reading, “WE’RE FOLLOWING CAPTAIN AMERICA INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH — ARE YOU?”

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Steve said.

“Maybe,” Bucky said, and Steve tilted his face, and Bucky frowned and pushed on, “maybe the rest of the guys are idiots enough to follow you.”

Steve frowned, like he’d thought Bucky would say something else. He said, “I’m flattered.”

Bucky huffed a laugh then, saw his breath in the air, felt a smile pulling unbidden across his face. He looked Steve in the eye, then, and said, “Yeah, you should be.”

In the cold, Steve’s cheeks were very pink, and his eyes were very blue. He was tall now, and broader, and the way it had filled out his face was. Striking. Beautiful. _That’s not a word you use for boys, Bucky._

Steve, so very pink with a mouth like a perfect pink rose, _Christ, Barnes_ , dropped the smoldering, dead cigarette butt belatedly, dropped his face to be sure he stubbed it out. He always did that. He always made sure he couldn’t possibly cause a fire. Bucky loved that. His eyelashes were so long.

“I missed you,” Steve murmured, looking up at Bucky from behind his hair.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky mumbled back, feeling more heat on his face, and the closeness of Steve’s face to his. “I bet you did, little guy.”

Their noses could touch. They didn’t. They weren’t. But they could, if Bucky tilted his head a little. Steve’s big old red nose would press against Bucky’s. If.

There was a shout from inside, a joyful one, of “cheers!” and “hullo!” Bucky jumped anyways, and Steve’s and his hands bounced into one another and apart as they turned to look towards the door.

“We should head in,” Steve said, smiling sort of sheepishly, and Bucky nodded quickly. Into the warmth would be good, he thought.

 

He was leaning on the bar; he’d left the wrangling of Gabe, Dugan, Morita, Falsworth, and Dernier to Steve. He was the one who wanted it. He was leaning on the bar, and thinking about Steve, how he was the same idiot kid, really, but how it seemed so different coming out of a face like that, a body like that, a _man_ like that.

Many years ago, when he was thirteen or fourteen, Bucky had begun to wonder what it would feel like to hold Steve. Not hug him, or jostle him, or keep him upright while he coughed, but hold him. Maybe lying down, Steve’s back to Bucky’s chest, so Bucky could keep that tiny cold jittery little body safe and contained and right there, and so their skin could be touching.

Bucky had tried a number of things to make this more palatable, less queasy, less _bad_. He’d thought it was only really a big brotherly urge to protect Steve, who’d been tiny and in need of shelter all his life. He’d thought it was because Steve looked, felt, was shaped kind of like a woman, maybe. He’d thought it was because he spent too much time with Steve and not enough with girls, or other boys, but he’d found no girls or other boys were quite as fun to hang out with as his best friend in the world.

All of this was relevant for a few reasons, just now. The first was simple, and terrible, and that was that Steve’s new body cased in that ridiculous stretchy uniform beneath the words “JAWS OF DEATH” had, when he’d first seen it a day ago, slammed Bucky’s body with the last thing in the world he expected to feel just then, which was powerful, heady lust. Teenager lust. Stupid, fumbling, holding-breasts-for-the-first-time, thrumming, idiot lust. So. There was that.

But more pressingly: Steve wanted to go back and keep fighting; of _course_ he did. There was nothing more Steve in the world than that, really, and hearing it made Bucky’s chest ache. It was so painfully, unrelentingly _him_ ; he was the same idiot kid under that uniform and in that strange giant body.

He did not want to go back. He never wanted to leave this little squat warm spot in London, unless it was on a barge back to New York, he didn’t want to leave unless it was straight into the arms of his mom. Frankly. Mom sounded perfect right now, actually. She didn’t even have to do anything; Bucky felt like he could _look_ at her forever. Just stand there and take her in, in all her normal small brown-eyed brown-haired simple Mama-ness, she who sang to them and rubbed their bellies and kissed his and his sisters’ and Steve’s foreheads and used to say, “Oh, my Bucky-boy,” when he was small and long past when he was old enough to ask her, many many times, to stop. He’d give anything, right now, to hear her say “oh, my Bucky-boy.”

He’d write her a letter tonight.

A cheer and a clank made him jump a bit, and he leaned back to see Steve smiling, with a confidence he’d genuinely never seen on the kid, rounding back to the bar from the table the guys had been at. His new unit. He heard a bartender say, “Where are they putting this stuff?” _Watch me, barkeep_ , Bucky thought wryly.

Steve slotted in next to him at the bar counter, as easily as he always had, as they’d been doing since they were kids, with the good luck to be coming of age just as Prohibition ended, and with Bucky’s unique ability to charm bartenders who would otherwise ban them after Steve entered into, or started, brawls. It was comforting.

“See? I told you,” Bucky said, over his eighth beer and the first to give him even some semblance of an effect. “They’re all idiots.”

Steve huffed a little laugh. If Bucky closed his eyes, Steve really was just the same. He resisted the urge to do so.

“How about you?” said Steve, lightly, and Bucky knew without looking that Steve was watching his face closely, making that drawn-up serious face he made when he studied someone closely, when he was about to be _earnest_ in that sweet queer way of his. “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

“Hell, no,” said Bucky, immediately, and later, months and days and even many, many years, later he would wonder what would happen if he’d stopped there. But he could never really imagine doing it, because what came next felt as natural as breathing. “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight. I’m following him.”

Something swelled in Bucky’s chest, then, and he felt something weird and heavy in his throat. He knew without looking that Steve’s face was going soft and Something.

“But you’re keeping the outfit, right?”

Steve snorted. “You know what?” he said, in that light voice, that lilting little voice so few people heard, the one that meant he was cracking himself up. “It’s kinda growing on me.”

Bucky laughed too, and if it wasn’t quite his mom saying “Bucky-boy,” it was still lovely and easy and the same, and Steve was right there with his big warm body and his big dorky nose and his hair not flopping into his eyes, for once.

They shared it, the sense of _sameness_ , the pleasure of knowing one another so well. The word— _beautiful_ —floated into Bucky’s head again, and it was so apt and good and warm and lovely he didn’t bother to push it away.

It took a moment for Bucky to recognize the _click_ ing noise he heard and why it was so unfamiliar—it was _high heels_. (“Sex, boys, it’s a reverent subject,” someone had said.)

He turned, and knew the bar was hushed for the same reason he was; even here in London it seemed the mere sight of women brought a shudder of silence to the room. And not like the women on the continent, who were mostly thin and who all had the same edge of hunger and desperation to them, like starved dogs, or—well, like Bucky himself, not long ago. _Don’t think like that_. This was lovely Peggy Carter, who appeared not so much to have put her dress on as poured herself into it.

“Captain,” she cooed, and Bucky hated her for just a second—and he always felt bad about that, and never hated her again before or since—but for that second. For that second he _hated_ her, hated her hard and ugly, because she didn’t _belong_ , she didn’t have the _sameness_ , she didn’t slot into BuckyandSteve, she was ruining something pristine and good.

“Agent Carter,” Steve replied.

“Ma’am,” Bucky added, coming to his senses. She’d been so lovely to him, after all, when they first arrived, when he was feverish and weird and when he caught himself hollering for his mother in the middle of a hospital in Houndsditch like a maniac, she had been very, very nice about it.

“Howard has some equipment for you to try,” Agent Carter was saying to The Captain, who was, Bucky supposed, both Steve and not quite the Steve of a moment ago; Bucky resisted the urge, on principle, to say “I’ve got some _equipment_ for you to try,” even though he knew it would make Steve laugh. “Tomorrow morning?”

She had to know every guy in there was looking at her, even as the boys in the next room kept singing, but she was focused on Steve like a spotlight, standing in front of him so precisely they could have been actors hitting tape on a stage.

“Sounds good,” said Steve mildly.

Peggy turned and looked towards the other room, where the rousing chorus continued; after a moment, she said, “I see your top squad is prepping for duty.”

Steve flushed a little then as Peggy swiveled her head back to him. _Okay, and Peggy stood up for me_ , he’d told Bucky, outside half an hour ago. Bucky bristled; so the guys wanted to get drunk and sing, who was Peggy Carter, who’d never set a foot in the factory or any place like it, even the country that _housed_ it, who was Nice Peggy Carter to object.

“You don’t like music?” is what Bucky said.

“I do, actually,” is what Peggy said back, but she didn’t turn and look at Bucky. She kept her eyes on Steve. “I might even, when this is all over, go dancing.”

 _When this is all over?_ What, the guys singing? The—what, the war?

“Then what are we waiting for?” Bucky said, thought for a wild moment of stripping Nice Peggy Carter out of that dress and roving his hands all over her back and legs and ass and stomach, all the places that shivered under a rough calloused touch, thought of sticking his face between her legs and _lapping_ , making her squirm and shout before he climbed on top of her and railed her silly, rearranged her _guts_ , she looked soft and he could do it, had done it, not like Steve, who really hadn’t, and it would feel so insanely good to be a man on top of a girl and be holding her and moving with her and thrusting like an idiot animal who was alive and good at staying that way. He wanted very badly to taste the sour taste of a body well used by another one.

“The right partner,” Peggy said, without looking away from Steve. “0800, Captain.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” said Steve, “I’ll be there,” and then Nice Peggy Carter was gone, and with the gust of her vanishing perfume went Bucky’s desire to throw her onto the bar and split her down the middle, but not the strange sense of being a ghost haunting his own life.

“I’m invisible,” he said, “I’m—I’m turning into you. It’s like some horrible dream.”

That’s the kind of thing he would have said, before, but he said it wrong; it dropped out of his mouth leaden and heavy and stupid. He should have said it like a joke, which it was, Christ. Steve had never been invisible; he’d never consent to invisibility. It was too tempting to holler and squabble.

“Don’t take it too hard,” said Steve brightly. “Maybe she has a friend.”

Maybe she has a friend. This had been Bucky’s singular refrain since they were about twelve, since just about the time of the infamous fight with Bucky’s Uncle Rudy in Queens. _Okay, so maybe she has a friend. It’s okay, Steve, maybe she has a friend. C’mon, Steve, come with us! I bet she has a friend!_

It was only now, in the year 1943 and standing in a pub with his stomach feeling buzzy and empty despite his dinner, and his head feeling sloshy and sick, that he realized _Steve didn’t have to come along on his dates_. Most people, in fact, did _not_ seek out reasons why their best friends of the same sex could tag along on their dates.

Shit. The thought returned, of Steve held in his arms, back when he was small, contained and safe; of himself, hollowed out and trembling like the kicked dog he was turning into, contained in _Steve_ ’s, in this massive furnace that used to be Steve Rogers. Then: of Peggy Carter, but instead of Nice Peggy Carter, what if it was Steve who Bucky slammed down on the bar and split into wriggling limbs?

He blinked hard at the thought, of the sudden intense desire to know what heady, musty smell Steve particularly had in his groin. Was it different for boys—for men? With girls it was sour-sweet, slick; he imagined something drier and warmer and. Jesus. _Jesus, Barnes, stop._

Bucky had never sucked a cock. He strongly suspected—all but knew—the same wasn’t true of Steve. Steve was pretty virginal, especially with girls, but Bucky had plenty of reasons, almost ten years worth of them, to suspect that with men, it might not be so simple. It was the sort of thing he didn’t think much about, like if he kept it out of his head he wouldn’t have to process it, though at that moment in the bar, it seemed almost oppressively unavoidable. Steve knew About That; Steve had _done_ that. He imagined Steve’s cheek on his thigh for just a moment before he shook himself. What the fuck kind of fairy shit was this.

“Buck? Wanna join the boys?”

The question felt oddly targeted.

 _Would Steve_ —?

For some time afterwards, and again, many, many years later, Bucky would wonder what would have happened if he’d shaken his head, said something light and suggestive—“I think I’d like to stay with this boy”—fixed Steve’s lapel, slipped outside, to where they’d smoked?

But he didn’t.

Instead, he followed Captain America into the jaws of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >Absolutely stunning art in this chapter by the incredible Jessie Lucid!. Isn't it amazing? Have a look around Jessie's tumblr, and I don't think you'll be surprised to learn I wrote 50,000+ words based on their art alone. :) 
> 
> >The chronology of _The First Avenger_ continues to bedevil me. I've tried my best. I situated everything as best I could and fudged the details. If you want to know what Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were doing in Iran, [they were, indeed, determining the fate of the world.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference) _Casablanca_ first saw limited release on November 26th, 1943.
> 
> >I changed Bucky's line from "That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb _not to_ run away from a fight" to "who was too dumb _to_ run away from a fight." I suspect that's what Bucky meant.
> 
> >"Sex, boys, it's a reverent subject" is a reference to my [my second favorite _Willie and Joe_ comic of all time](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--b21ZhVpW9A/VxIT4GccH_I/AAAAAAAAEFU/Ea7K8bTMfGwdiTvE5vwSJH6ylgyzTIHaQCLcB/s1600/Bill%2BMauldin_Take%2Boff%2Byer%2Bhat.jpg).
> 
> >This chapter has a lot of stifled homoerotic longing, doesn't it! If you're ever curious about the service of gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women during the Second World War, I highly recommend Allan Bérubé's incredible _Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women During World War II_.


	6. Chapter Five: The Jaws of Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, intrusive thoughts of sexual and violent nature, and gratuitous backstory.
> 
> Hover over text not in English to see translations. There will also be translations, along with historical notes, in the end notes.

Following Captain America into the jaws of death, it turned out, didn’t matter much at first; it was just a lot of staying in London, while Steve talked to Phillips and Phillips talked to Higher Ups.

There were meetings he and the others were expected to sit in on, cloistered in warm, yellowish rooms with Phillips and Stark and Nice Peggy Carter, bent over a map Steve had recreated based on something he’d seen at the factory. Steve had always been really good with maps. Kid couldn’t read worth a damn, truly was just barely able to spell, but his sense of space and distance and color had always been good. When they were about eight, Steve had created a gorgeous and painstaking map of their neighborhood, lovingly rendered in stolen and broken pencils, with labeled streets and a key and a series of inspired landmarks Bucky labeled, having the better penmanship: “library,” “movie-house,” “best candy,” “cheapest candy,” “candy easy to steal.”

Occasionally, Bucky himself was called upon to provide details or information, about positions or the factory; in every case his mouth felt dry and his chest stuttered, and more than once somebody else swooped in to answer while Bucky sat there with his mouth hanging open like an idiot, trying to answer a question like “what time of night would they send you back to the cages?” or “what was the terrain like?” or “who seemed to be in charge?”

That last one made his stomach somersault, remembering the man with the melting face, remembering the bridge and the masked men who skittered to do what—what—he. Zola. Said. What he told them.

Gabe took that one for him. Which was nice.

 

And then, all too soon, they were back to the Continent, where things were not the way they’d been in London. London was damp, and cold, and poor, and hungry, and blown mostly apart, but it wasn’t like the continent. On the continent, the people were skinny, and the lights didn’t glow yellow and warm. Every light on the continent was grey or blue; the mud was back, and constant. The people, when he spotted them, seemed like ghosts out the corner of his eye. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t Nazis; in Italy, in the first months of 1944, they were primarily just cold.

Bucky was cold, too, and for the first few weeks it was a lot like the regular army, in that it was just so much walking, and being muddy and cold with wet socks, and finding that most of the time his legs walked without the cooperation or intervention of his brain, which left it free to wander aimlessly and endlessly over the landscape, the impossibly small and distant houses with their far-off glint of windows, like eyes watching them slink past in the woods. 

January was a white blur of cold and walking, radioing back to London and Gabe translating and Steve mapping, Italian partisans answering their questions and smoking their cigarettes. Bucky remembered the one thing he’d been really good at, when he was Sergeant Barnes of the 107th.

Which was shooting guys. 

He wasn’t just good at shooting guys. He was, in Dernier’s words, a _savant_ at shooting guys. A genius. A master. An ace. The Napoleon of sniping; the Di Vinci of blowing guys’ brains out at a significant range. It wasn’t just the aiming and the shooting, it was the art. He had a notebook. He did the math. He did it fast, and well, and he could put a bullet between somebody’s eyebrows from a thousand feet. The math was comforting, it was rhythmic, it tied him so perfectly down to the earth. It felt like home smelled, Mr. Campbell’s classroom and the words “the curvature of the earth.”

“You’re doing math?” Steve said. “To aim?”

Bucky looked at his messy scrawl in his notebook, which didn’t look much like the book from which he’d learned this, back in England when he was Sergeant Barnes of the 107th and not a Howling Commando or a special operative or always fucking shaking and hungry.

“A-C,” Steve read, “equals…2 upside-down U times v.” 

“It’s not just aiming, dummy,” he told Steve. “You gotta track the object”—in this case, a deer scurrying through the woods—“and the movement of the earth. And then, look, here, it’s in the book, here’s where I’m shooting from, it’s a curve. There’s no wind today. It’s easy.” 

Steve shot a tree about four feet to the left of the deer. Bucky and Gabe laughed so hard they slipped into the snow and it got down their coats. Dugan cooked the deer for dinner.

It was nice to be the best at one thing.   
  


The days blurred together, buoyed as much by the formula to track the bullet and its journey around and through the earth and into some guy’s eye socket as it was by the trudging of his wet boots. It was Valentine’s Day, he realized, one day, waking up in an Italian family’s barn in the freezing fucking cold and dreading the temperature of the razor on his skin. He didn’t like the cold; he’d never liked it, but these days it felt like it hurt.

  
But three days ago had been febbraio, the undicesimo, and that meant that it was Valentine’s Day, and he was sleeping in a barn in the middle of nowhere. He lay in the choking smoke of a bad dream, a dream of _liebling_ and skin peeled back from his body in curling roles like Christmas ribbons, of someone reaching into him as easily as if his skin were water and tearing him to pieces. Last Valentine’s Day, he’d been back in New York; it seemed like a different universe. Last Valentine’s Day, he’d done Lois from behind and she’d called him “James” to seem sexier, and they’d talked about getting married, and then he’d arranged a double-date with her and her friend and Steve, and then Lois and the friend had gone off to get home and in bed and Steve and Bucky, who didn’t live in gender-specific housing with walls a man had to scale to get his dick sucked, had gone out for beers and eaten peanuts and talked about the war, about their chances of getting some tail later in the week (Bucky’s: good; Steve’s: nebulous), and Steve had slunk off after the second pitcher. They’d sang with their arms around one another, swaying and laughing and enjoying the heat of one another’s bodies and being kind of willingly giddily queer about it, but then Steve had slipped away, and it was only now, a year later, in a disgusting barn in the freezing heart of wherever-the-fuck, Italy, that Bucky put together that he’d probably gone off and gotten plenty of tail from a man.  
 

He wasn’t sure why, exactly, it seemed so crystal clear now, but it did. His heart throbbed with jealousy, and that odd animal desire from the bar to not so much fuck someone as to _devour_ them. And not so much someone as Steve. 

“You up, Barnes?” somebody called, and Bucky got up, trying to ignore the way his brain kept insistently wandering back to the idea of just fucking skewering Steve sometime, just making him see a new fucking color. That would make the smoke of the dream clear. 

“Yep,” he said, “I’m up.”

 

             

That day, like most days, was walking, slower than in the army Moving Inland, because they had to be careful. They weren’t the army, Steve had said urgently, they couldn’t announce themselves. They were getting on a train. Or blowing up a train? Bucky forgot, frankly. The scheming was Steve and Gabe’s job. Bucky shot guys.

So he was perched on a hill when Dernier’s well placed explosives derailed a train in central Italy which, according to information unspecified origin—nobody told Bucky anything, but, in fairness, he never listened when they did—and watched as Steve and the others marched several ever-uniformed Germans off the train and into a little clearing. Bucky’s job was to shoot anybody who tried anything.

“Don’t kill them,” Gabe said, “just stop them running.”

“Bust their kneecaps,” Dugan confirmed merrily.

“Kill them later,” Dernier had added, with a grin.

So Bucky waited on the hill with his rifle and his notebook, watching as the others marshalled the train’s passengers into groups. They all looked to be officers, by their bearing and their clothes, which meant Gabe and Peggy’s intelligence was good, which was good. Gabe had even said there was a good chance Arnim Zola, if not Schmidt (the name, Bucky had since learned, of the man whose face melted off) would be on the train. The thought made Bucky’s stomach lurch, but with a sort of burning excitement, he thought. Shoot the fucker in the kneecap. See how he liked it.

Bucky didn’t think Zola was any of the men who’d tramped off the train so far, though. They were all too tall and slender, not stout and squat like him, almost funnily small if he hadn’t. If he wasn’t. The way he was. If he hadn’t been a top Nazi scientist, for example. Who. Well. Who did what he did.

In Bucky’s crosshairs, the ten-odd men Falsworth and Dugan had frog-marched away from the train and the other passengers, many of whom appeared to be regular army Germans and Italians, suddenly seemed to move as one, their bodies all jerking unnaturally. Bucky, alarmed, lined up his Kneecap Shot, before any of the fuckers could run or—

But their knees were all buckling, one after another, and hitting the snowy earth; two, then three, then four of them doubled over as if in horrendous pain, and vomit puddled in the snow at their knees. What the fuck?

They were all turning red, what little of their faces he could see, and the first of them faceplanted hard into the vomit exactly as Steve, at a dead sprint, ran over and grabbed one of those still standing by the collar.

“Que diable se passe-t-il?!” he heard Dernier scream, loud enough to reach him up on the hill, to send birds flying into the white sky, and still through his crosshairs he saw Steve shouting to the man in his grip, who was jerking stiffly as if Steve were shaking him, but Steve wasn’t.

Bucky finally wrenched his eyes from his rifle sight and grabbed his radio. “The fuck is going on down there!” he shouted, to no avail. He hesitated; if he ran down to see what was happening, he risked giving away his position, their primary advantage now the tracks were blown and their presence was surely known. He whipped his head around to were Gabe and Jim had been marshalling the civvies, and could see no evidence that the same thing was happening there.

Cursing, he grabbed his binoculars and squinted down at Steve again; he was now standing in a circle of clearly dead bodies, looking ruddy and furious, panting. He was calling something to someone, but Bucky couldn’t hear.

Did—did Steve kill those guys? Little Steve from Myrtle Avenue? Somehow, with his new body that was so—big?

Bucky sat down, furious, and brought the rifle sight back up to his eye, waiting for somebody’s kneecap to bust or brain to blow in.

(Little Bucky from Myrtle Avenue?)

As it was, he wasn’t sure how long he sat there, watching everybody argue and Dugan and Jim drag the dead bodies back onto the train, into a different compartment than the men in regular uniform, and the twelve odd civilians in their brown coats that looked like rumbled sandwich bags. His elbows were stiff and his torso was cold and his legs were wet, and eventually he heard, “Barnes, c’mon down,” on his radio, and Gabe sounded exhausted when he said it.

By the time Bucky had picked his way through the trees to where the others were gathered it was getting dark; Steve was in the center of their little huddle, looking sour and anxious all at once.

“The fuck happened!” he called ahead, and they all turned to look at him, looking the same sort of sick and hesitant as Steve, except Dernier, who didn’t turn around.

“Cyanide,” said Gabe, and when Bucky raised his eyebrows he sighed and said, “They poisoned themselves.”      

“How in the fuck,” Bucky said, “they were only off the train for two minutes!”

“Suicide pills,” said Steve woodenly, in that dead monotone he always took on when he was trying to keep a tamper on his anger. “They keep it in their teeth.”

“How do you know?” Bucky demanded, the realization that they’d failed utterly in this first mission catching up to him and circling him in a kind of flushed, embarrassed anger that demanded someone to blame.

“In New York,” said Steve, dully, “uh, there was a guy. At the—the office, when they gave me the. Thing.” He gestured broadly to his own body, and Bucky found himself wondering suddenly if Gabe and the others had any idea Steve used to weigh ninety pounds and struggle to lift more than two hardcover books at once. “When I caught up to him, he—he did the same, committed suicide. I didn’t know they would have it.”

“We’ll just have to plan for it next time,” said Gabe wearily, but kindly, already looking over Steve’s shoulder down the tracks they’d ruined, , as if already planning for the next go at it.

“In New _York_?” Morita asked, and Steve mumbled that he’d tell him the story later.

“Why didn’t we plan to for it _this_ time?” Bucky snapped, a kind of awful, furious energy building in him, the kind that spoils for a fight and is restless until something’s bent or bleeding.

“Because I didn’t know they’d have them here!” Steve returned, as pissy as Bucky felt.

“Cowards,” Dernier huffed, turning from the spot where the bodies had been for the first time.

For a moment, Bucky thought he meant them, this brand-new idiot-ass unit Steve had slapped together by virtue of wanting to take his friends along for the ride, before realizing he meant the Germans. The Hydra guys. Well. That too.

“We should—I guess, call somebody,” said Jim, a little dully.

“Fuck,” said Bucky, and then, loudly, “ _fuck_!”

It didn’t matter; not really. Nobody on that train was going to change the course of history, probably, and it wasn’t like Schmidt of face melting fame or Zola were onboard the train; it wasn’t like they’d lost them. And ten more of the fuckers were dead, and maybe some of the original flavor Krauts onboard would be able to tell them something that would take the fuckers off the map. But. Bucky had wanted to put the damn bullet in _somebody_ ’s kneecap.

“I’ll radio Phillips,” Gabe said, after a moment, “to send somebody down to get these guys.”

“Combien de temps cela prendra-t-il, Jones?” muttered Dernier. “Je veux pas s’asseoir sur mon cu avec le boshe.”

“Would you speak ENGLISH?” Bucky snapped, making everyone turn to look at him. He closed his eyes for a moment; he hadn’t meant to shout. He was just tired. He didn’t want to have to _ask_ what everything meant. He wanted to know what was happening and make it better. He just. Wanted to understand. He didn’t mean to shout.

“I said: I don’t want to sit here on my ass with the German fuckers,” said Dernier shortly.

Oh. Well. Neither, frankly, did Bucky.

Everybody looked at each other for a moment.

“How about this,” said Steve evenly, in a tone of deliberate, mitigating calm Bucky had rarely heard him use. It sounded familiar, somehow, anyways. “I don’t think we’re far from an Allied base. Gabe and I will get in touch with Phillips, and stay here. You too, Dugan?”

Dugan nodded.

“Okay,” said Steve. “Then Morita and Falsworth, you two can go on back to the farmhouse we stayed in last night, see if they can take us one more. Dernier, Bu—Barnes, you two secure us a perimeter and maybe shoot us a deer. Fair?”

Bucky realized where he knew the arbitrator voice from; it was _his_. That was _his_ tone, when he tried to get Steve to calm down, back home, before he beat some big fucker’s face in for some offence too minor to risk his life for.

Everyone nodded or mumbled their assent.

Bucky and Dernier started walking, making towards the hill Bucky had stationed himself atop before, in silence at first. Bucky wasn’t sure if he was still in trouble for snapping at Dernier to speak English, or if Dernier even cared enough to be mad.

“How many—” Dernier said, suddenly, just as the darkness became more or less complete around them, “how long have you known each other, Captain Rogers and you?”

Bucky was surprised by the question, but the answer came easily. “All my life.”

This was true; Bucky really didn’t remember a time when he and Steve didn’t know one another; they’d met really in school, Bucky five and Steve four, but they’d played together before that, as their buildings were separated only by a slender alley. They’d played Explorers, and Soldiers, and Zoo Keepers. They’d even, Bucky remembered with a certain prickle of embarrassment, played House, with little Rebecca as Baby, and Bucky and Steve as Father and Mother, respectively. They’d romped around the schoolyard and gone for walks after church; they’d sat next to each other in class as often as possible before this arrangement was universally outlawed in their tiny schoolhouse, for they were causing too much trouble. Bucky had read to Steve, since they were very small; Steve had drawn pictures based on their books, about King Arthur and space travel and twenty-thousand leagues under the sea. They’d read _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ and _Around the World in Eighty Days_ three times each, Bucky reading the chapters to Steve and his sisters. They’d read _Treasure Island_ so many times the New York Public Library on Linden Street’s copy probably still had some of Steve’s pictures folded in; when last he’d seen it, the library slip read simply “J Barnes,” “S Rogers,” “J Barnes,” “S Rogers” in endless rotation. They’d slept together in Bucky’s narrow bed with the girls clustered into the larger one next to it hundreds of nights; they watched movies together, both in the seats and secretly from the projector’s box Steve had a key to. They kissed each other’s mother’s cheeks and called each other’s mothers “ma.” They ran away to Manhattan and got lost together; they went to the Met together and Bucky let Steve gush. They looked at dinosaur bones together, too, by the park, and afterwards walked for hours pretending to be from different countries to every person they met. They taught one another to dance, haltingly to Steve’s radio while his mother worked a late shift. They’d attended church services together; Bucky fidgeting through Steve’s first communion, Steve through Bucky’s baptism. They used to say they were brothers, but better.

“I can see it,” Dernier said, and Bucky wanted to ask how but didn’t. “Who joined the army first?” The _arm-hee_ , he said it, his accent encircling every word he said. Bucky had always been good at telling what people were saying with accents, though Dernier’s English was superb.

“Steve,” said Bucky, at once, even though it maybe wasn’t strictly true—but, surely, who had been down at the draft office the day after Pearl Harbor? That was Steve. Dernier chuckled once, like this confirmed what he’d believed already. After a few more steps, Bucky added, “I was drafted.”

To his relief, Dernier did not reply with “I can see it.” Instead he said, “Ah. I’m like you. I didn’t intend to join any army.” He sighed, and scratched his chin. “You know the national anthem of France? Maybe you do not. It’s called La Marseillaise. You know what it tells about? Where it comes from?”

Bucky, who’d grown up around immigrants but none of them, to his knowledge, French, could only hum it a bit, because people tended to hum it at the Allies. A few days prior, as they tramped through Italy, a teenaged boy with a shaky old dog had done just that—so, Gabe had darkly clarified, Steve might opt not to shoot him.

“It talks—it is about freedom,” Dernier said, “from tyrants, any kind, but also, from foreign invaders. It is called La Marseillaise because, when the Revolution was having—was happening, people from my city sang it so much.” He drew a cigarette from his pocket and offered it to Bucky, who took it gratefully; he was so fucking hungry. When he’d lit his own, Dernier continued, “And so—when they marched into Paris. _Le boshe_ —we call them that since the first war, you know—I said to my sister, ‘I know what I must do.’”

Bucky listened, let the taste of the cigarette really settle over him, ground his heart back in his chest between his warmed lungs. Dernier sounded like Steve; he couldn’t imagine what Steve would have done if the Japs or the Germans had marched through Washington.

“I remember when the first war ends. Ended. I had seven years old. Almost eight. We had a party, for days and days. It’s over, we are saying, it’s over. My father comes home.”

“Steve’s father—Captain Rogers’s, I mean,” said Bucky, “him too. Before Steve was born, he fought in that war, too.”

Dernier smiled, just a flicker, and they walked in silence for a few moments, companionable.

“These men,” Dernier said, after a moment, “are cowards. They. I don’t have strong enough words in English. They gather men and women, children, up, shoot them where they stand. They are making them dig their own graves, making them count each other as they fall into the holes. When they have the last one, they shoot him into the bodies. They’re proud of it.” He took a long drag of his cigarette. “They marched through the Arc de Triomphe. In Paris. They do this so every man in France will feel small. Like they bomb Marseilles. Or London. Like they go through the villages. So you will say, ‘They’re big. I’m small.’”

They were still walking, and were a long way from the train now, making a long arc around. In the darkness, Bucky heard a bird’s wings and the rustles of little animals in the night. The barely-punctured silence wasn’t a sound he could get used to; for this, Gabe called him the city boy.

“But you and me,” Dernier said, as he tossed the cigarette, which he’d smoked down to scarcely a stub, out into the woods, “we know.”

What do we know, Bucky wondered. I don’t know shit, guy.

“We _know_ , because you have been inside and I have been inside, inside the places where they are in charge. We know they’re not so big. We know really, they say so, because they don’t want us to know they’re small.”

Bucky stared at him for a moment. His throat suddenly felt too small, his face hot. He blinked hard. _Because we have been inside the places where they are in charge_ ; where they strapped Bucky to a table and blinded him, where they marched through Paris. It wasn’t the same, but it was. Somehow. A little bit. He knew, anyways, what Dernier was saying.

“Yeah,” he said, “they are.” He threw his own cigarette butt away, and Dernier immediately produced a second one.

“Now, savant. Let’s find you something fat to shoot,” he said cheerfully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >Before modern calculators and computing efforts took over the job, snipers had to do a lot of math to account for the movement and curvature of the earth, which [makes even an object that's still a "moving target."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force) There's also more math, which I was too overwhelmed by math to write in, concerning the way the barrel of the gun spins the bullet. In any case, distance, the curvature of the earth, the direction of the shot, and the movement of the earth all must be factored in, making sniping with as much success as Bucky in 1944 a hell of an accomplishment. The equation Steve is trying to read can be seen [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force#Formula)
> 
> >Dernier's backstory is based solely on his being the oldest of the Howling Commandos [(born in 1911)](http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Jacques_Dernier) and a member of the French resistance. His story about the French national anthem is, in fact, true. An appropriately grisly translation of La Marseillaise can be found [here.](http://www.marseillaise.org/english/english.html)
> 
> > _Le boche_ is an old and loaded term for Germans, used by the French primarily during World War II. It is a shortened form of the French slang word _alboche_ , which was itself a combination of "German" ( _Allemand_ ) and "cabbage" or "head" ( _caboche_ ). It is not a nice term, and [the French Resistance maintained an attachment to the term.](https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc471/m1/1/med_res/)
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Febbraio - February  
> Undicesimo - the eleventh  
> Que diable se passe-t-il? - "What the hell happened?"  
> Combien de temps cela prendra-t-il? - "How long will it take?"  
> Je veux pas s’asseoir sur mon cu avec le boshe. - "I don't want to sit here on my ass with the Germans."


	7. Chapter Six: The Zone Occupée

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter in particular is dedicated to the marvelous Vextant, who gave me the idea for a major event in this chapter.
> 
> Warnings for panic attacks, violence, smoking, trauma, minor gore, and mentions of child abuse.
> 
> Hover over text not in English to see translations. Translations will also be available, along with historical notes, in the end notes.

In the days and weeks that followed, they fell into a kind of recognizable pattern; the army, but on its side. They walked, eastward and northward mostly, along train tracks, along river beds, along old cow paths. They radioed Phillips, they radioed Peggy, they radioed Dernier’s old friends in the _zone libre_. They cut phone lines, they intercepted mail, they listened to the BBC, to De Gaulle, on their busted-out radio. They played cards and they talked to the locals; Bucky found that French and Italian phrases caught and trapped more easily in his head these days. He could get along pretty good. _Nous sommes américains. Information. Informazione. Siamo americani. Non ti faremo del male. Nous pouvons vous donner: nouritture _(if we have any left), _argent_ (if we got any), _protection_ (God willin’) _. Américains. Abbiamo bisogno di informazioni. Nous ne te ferons pas de mal. Stiamo cercando tedeschi. Pas les troupes normales. Hydra?_

And, slowly, quietly, from the corners of their mouths, people began to talk. Mostly in France, in the _zone occupée_ , run through with the saber that was the Occupation. Talk about the men who swept in after the soldiers, descended on the villages and picked through the remains. _Des scientifiques_ , they called themselves. _L’avenir_ , they called themselves. ( _Where are we going? The future._ ) They took the strongest women, the weakest men. Deformed children, sickly children, robust children. Women who were pregnant and men who’d been mutilated in the first war.

Où les prennent-ils?

Nous savons pas.

Que font-ils avec eux?

Nous savons pas.

Est-ce qu’ils reviennent?

Jamais.

They didn’t find Hydra; they found their remains. The bunkers and basements and odd lean-tos they occupied, always abandoned in a rush, always haunted by strange pieces of what had been done before: vials and clattering hypodermic needles on the floor; tables with manacles. Cages. A bone saw. Empty, coiling tubing; pages of numbers without context. A pile of teeth.

It made Bucky angry, sometimes, to see they’d come too late. He stormed off, often, into the woods, into the meadow or the riverbank, whatever gorgeous, starved countryside they were trampling through. Sometimes Steve would follow. When he did, they usually just smoked in silence.

And then, one day, in some damp woods in deep in the forest in the _zone occupée_ , in the maze of slick roots and peeling trees and the sounds of wolves at night, they found one that was untouched. No thrown-open doors, no flattened trees in the clearing or strange smell in the air, no Kübelwagen prints in the mud. Bucky wasn’t breathing as Morita knelt next to the lock; he didn’t think any of them were. He imagined they all thrummed, as he did, with the urgency and closeness of the violence they were about to commit.

And then, all at once, Bucky was drowning above ground.

He couldn’t breathe. His throat hurt beyond comprehension, like it was blistering, like it was being boiled, like it was being dragged over with a thousand fishhooks. His chest was collapsing, his eyes were burning, he had to move, had to move right now, anywhere but this spot, Christ, _help_ —

Someone—Steve? no, it wasn’t him—Falsworth?—was yelling, but Bucky couldn’t remotely distinguish words. Everything was ringing and pain, his body seized with writhing, immediate panic to get away, to break through the choking smothering _something_ surrounding him and get _air in_ —so he staggered forward, desperate, choking, anything to get away, eyes and throat and nostrils on fire—

He landed in the leaves, crashing to his knees as he ran, and felt a body thud hard next to his own. He felt the first rush of cold air into his lungs and almost cried, would have if he didn’t feel so sick and weak, Christ, anything—

In an instant of animal self-preservation, he had wrenched the thick felt collar of his jacket up over his mouth and nose, and lowered it only cautiously now, taking small gulps of air like a child who needed convincing soup wouldn’t burn his tongue. Christ, his tongue felt coated and his lungs felt smoggy. Everything lightly blistered when he breathed.

“What the fuck,” gasped Dugan, the body that had crashed next to Bucky, his voice thick and choked.

“ _Gas_ ,” said Falsworth, immediately, and Bucky glanced up to see Falsworth standing, but slumped hard against a tree, his hand to his throat and his face streaked in tears. Dugan’s too; when Bucky craned his neck to see Dernier, Morita, and Gabe all collapsed on the ground he saw they, too, were breathing, coughing and hacking and sobbing as well, but alive.

Where the fuck was Steve?

As if in answer to his question, Gabe pointed weakly over Bucky’s shoulder; he turned and saw Steve a few yards back, leaning hard on a tree, his face a mask of perfect terror. He was rapping his knuckles hard on his Adam’s apple; this was what he did, what he’d always done, when he couldn’t breathe. Bucky’s first thought, automatic, ingrained, was _oh, he’s having an asthma attack_.

But he didn’t get those anymore.

He rose on shaking legs and made his way, bent half double, to where Steve stood, leaving his fellows wheezing in the leaves and reaching Steve after what felt like a long time trying to get air in.

“Steve,” he said roughly, his voice wrecked and raw. Christ, and it hurt to talk.

Steve didn’t respond, barely tracked Bucky with his eyes, which were too wide and, like everyone’s streaming hard.

“Steve,” Bucky gritted out again. “What’s. What’s-a-matter.”

Steve dragged in a long, painful breath. Bucky waited. Steve heaved again, then whispered, “My dad.”

What the fuck?

Steve’s father, Joseph Rogers, had died when Bucky and Steve were pretty small. He had been a stout, ruddy, curt man with thick eyebrows and no manners. So rarely was he actually at the Rogers residence that Bucky had only formally conversed with him twice before his death; both times had been unremarkable but left Bucky a little nervous. Bucky knew, though, the facts of Joe Rogers’s life, as one learns for a best friend: he was born, like Steve’s mother, in Adare, a small town back in Ireland; he’d come to America in 1913, only to return to Europe as a soldier in the Great War, where he’d been exposed to the mustard gas that would leave him with a lingering respiratory infection, partial blindness, and a voice full of gravel. He died in 1924, and Bucky had attended his wake.

He’d broken Steve’s collarbone four months before he died. He’d been drunk, and they never talked about it, but Bucky knew, in that unknowable way children know one another’s family secrets long before they know what they mean, that it had happened.

“Your dad?” Bucky growled, eyes streaming anew at the effort of talking, back in a the _zone occupée_ in 1944.

And then, of course, he realized why, and Jesus, Steve, now?

“He,” Steve rasped, but evidently couldn’t continue.

“It’s okay,” Bucky grit out, unable to think what else to say. “It’s okay, Steve, it’s okay.”

“No,” Steve mumbled, and Bucky didn’t know what was inside his head at all.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen Steve panic—on the contrary, he’d seen Steve in panics far worse than this one, in fits of pure hysteria really, hyperventilating and shaking and asking nonsense questions, rocketed backwards through time to his dead father’s bedside, to the tonsillectomy he’d had as a child that had coincided with a fever so immense that Steve had hallucinated monsters prying open his mouth, to an unspecified incident in the rectory the spring before he turned ten. He’d seen Steve airless, rudderless, lost, delirious, hysterical. But that was at home, that was when Steve was _small_ , that was in a different country and, it felt, a different language, a different century, a conversation between different boys.

He turned to look back at the others. They were mostly still panting and insensate; Falsworth had sunk to the ground. His lungs aching but no longer on fire, he turned back to Steve.

“Steve. Little guy”—not so little anymore, but—“c’mon. Look at me. It’s okay.”

Steve’s eyes were barely tracking, and _streaming_ ; Bucky knew it was the gas, but Christ, the poor kid.

“My. My dad, Buck,” Steve whispered.

“I know,” said Bucky. “It’s not the same, though.”

“It isn’t?”

Bucky thought about it. Steve sniffed and shuddered, his hand finally ceasing its panicked rapping on his throat.

“Not quite,” he said, and offered his arm to Steve, who took it gratefully and squeezed it with those hands that were so differently shaped now.

“Hi,” Steve whispered.

“Hi,” said Bucky. Steve let go, and they started to walk, shoulder-to-shoulder, back to where the others were gathered.

“Well, the downside,” Morita said, voice even more wrecked than Steve’s or Bucky’s, “is I think—anybody in there—is onto us.”

Falsworth huffed a grim laugh, and Bucky smiled a little. His teeth felt coated in grime, but Steve nodded behind him and said, “Yeah, well. Let’s go.”

They tramped forward, regaining something like a formation as they went, and Steve led the way into the little underground room, Bucky behind him, the rest following. Despite the gas, nobody could have come out the door while they were choking in the dirt; one of them would have seen. Anyone inside there was _still_ there, where they could catch them, keep them, make them answer. Bucky’s fingers were trembling, feather light, on the trigger on his gun (discipline be damned—these men would die by his hand, not the other way around).

Inside was not the chaos they normally found; instead, a neat, organized laboratory. At the table, as quaintly arranged as if they were attending a dinner party, were eight corpses in Hydra uniforms; the foam at their mouth told Bucky what had happened before Steve’s soft “dammit” reached his ears. Bucky had no desire to stay with the dead.

He pushed past Steve, raced through the doors beyond the laboratory, to a room he could barely see for the darkness, but he smelled immediately, strongly, overpoweringly; it smelled, in here, the way—the way the factory had smelled. The part he was in, specifically. Just him.

He shook his head a bit, moved forward as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, walking further into the blackness while someone fidgeted for a torch or a light switch, and then the room was flooded, suddenly and unpleasantly, with garish yellow light, and—

“ _Shit_ ,” he heard from behind him, and he’d never know which one said it, because his head was full of copper smell and a kind of static roar, and in front of him were cages— _cages_ —and inside were people, none of them moving, and the copper smell was, he realized, blood, because each of the people in the cages was situated in a little puddle of it, because they each had a bullet through their skull.

“Bucky—” somebody said, but Bucky didn’t care, didn’t even know what anybody meant by saying a word when the cages and the room were swimming before his eyes and his stomach was churning and his throat was hot and—

His legs, evidently, made an executive decision divorced of his brain, because he was turning and moving past the cages, the strangely posed bodies inside, the blood-smell, the burning smell, the tableau of absurdly slumped bodies at the table and the puddles of their frothy bile, out the door into the woods which still smelled badly of the gas that had clogged their throats and filled Steve’s head with the other war, and past the trees until all he could smell was wet leaves, and then he very abruptly sat on the ground and stared hard at nothing.

The silence billowed around him, pleasantly, and he thought about Mom, about Ruthie and Lil laughing with their sweet brown heads together, asking him some question designed to get an answer that would make him look like an idiot (“Bucky, is, uh, does your store—have—have Prince Albert in a can?”), of Becca and her stupid convoluted puns, her worried eyebrows and the conspiratorial way she talked to him, imagined her coming to sit next to him and saying, “Buck? What’s got you sulking?”

A long way away, a wolf howled. Bucky imagined it coming over and eating from his hand, like a fairy tale. Like something Mom would tell him and Becca and the little ones.

Closer at hand, he heard footsteps. They were careful, slow, picking through the roots and leaves, but heavy. Someone big.

Oh, shit. Steve.

“Bucky?”

He turned and looked, and there was Steve, giant now but hunched, like he was trying to be smaller, like he wished he was able to move lithely and near-invisibly the way he used to. Oh, Steve. Bucky adored him.

Steve lowered himself onto the ground next to Bucky, and Bucky became abruptly aware he was sniffling, and his face was streaked with tears. Shit. Oh, shit. He scrubbed his face with the back of his hand.

 Steve didn’t say anything, just leaned a little so their shoulders touched. Bucky wished there were big enough words for it.

           

Later that night, in his tent, Bucky tried to think about his sisters and the war effort and the jokes Dugan and Gabe were cracking at dinner, because all he could smell was the blood, and all he could hear was people screaming and the word _liebling_ and the sound of electricity crackling, and then he was rocketing up out of his bedroll and staggering out of his tent, towards the smoldering fire they’d all cooked over that evening. Steve was there, smoking a cigarette quietly. Bucky, who was sweating and shaking, made his way over and sunk down beside him.

“Hi,” Steve said.

“Hi,” Bucky said.

“Can’t sleep?”

Bucky shook his head.

“Me either.”

Bucky nodded, looked down at his own shaking hands.

They didn’t talk about it; they’d never talked about it. They talked _around_ it. Bucky knew about Steve’s tonsil nightmare, and most of the biographical details to fill it out; he knew about Steve’s moments of paralyzing, hysterical anxiety. And Steve knew about Bucky’s anxieties about his father’s gambling, about providing for the twins and Becca and Mom, about the stresses of his job and the hole Lois left in his heart. But. This was different. It was bigger and worse and it made him want to run until his legs came out from under him, because he didn’t know how to be himself anymore and his best friend being there and being so different was making it so much worse, so much more dizzying and big, too big for his stupid head.

He was staring at a stain on Steve’s shirt, and floating, and frozen. There was no fire, no forest, no smoke. He was a single paralyzed thought in time and he couldn’t make his mouth move to say anything.

Steve asked, very quietly, if he was okay. It seemed, just then, like the stupidest question in the world, both because Bucky couldn’t remember what it felt like to be a solid presence on planet Earth, and because it was Steve who’d been shot through the thigh a few hours ago.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, abruptly, it felt, like he hadn’t spoken in years. “I’m fine. I’m okay. Don’t. I’m okay.”

Steve nodded and looked down at the fire again. He said, “Alright.”

Bucky looked at the fire too. He felt like an asshole, again, and alone, and sick, and stupid.

“I’m sorry,” Steve was saying, and Bucky tracked the little orange beacon from Steve’s mouth and back as Steve took a drag of his cigarette and rested his wrist on his knee.  “I haven’t. Been as good to you as I should, I think.”

Bucky swallowed. Steve hadn’t done anything wrong, but he also had other friends (which Steve wasn’t used to), and not needed Bucky as much (which _Bucky_ was not used to), and he’d failed so far to Fix Bucky, in that they had not come back to normal, which he probably blamed himself for. It felt ugly and bad and Steve had health and friends and all the things he wanted. _What the fuck is wrong with you, Barnes?_

He said, “You didn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. I—I’m all fucked up.”

Steve looked shocked. He said, “No. You’re not—you’re not like that.”

Bucky, steeling himself, said, “I just mean. I’m. I haven’t been. I mean—it’s. It’s. Ever since.” He took a big long breath and said, “I really thought I was gonna die there.”

Steve was quiet but he nodded.

Bucky didn’t say, _I really hoped I was gonna die there_. He couldn’t say that aloud. He couldn’t possibly say that out loud, out in the woods in the weakly straining spring of 1944, sitting next to his best friend who’d become a hero to the nation, whose illustrated “Letter to the Troops” was published in _Stars & Stripe s_and circulated widely in what would become the last weeks before D-Day, who told Bucky in seriousness that even as a symbol to the nation, _Bucky_ was still the only one he’d trust to be his second in command. Bucky couldn’t say it. But.

But he’d really wanted to die, back in the factory. He’d seen no way to get out and dying would be way better than staying.

But then—Steve was there? Somehow, there in the furthest place on earth from where Bucky had left him? And he knew how it happened but it still felt like a dream, and every morning he expected to wake up either back in that cell or back on that table and he couldn’t say that to Steve either, because he didn’t want Steve to know he was crazy.

Steve, after a few minutes, held out the cigarette he was smoking and said, “It’s weird, I keep waiting for it to hurt. To fuck with my lungs, I mean. They haven’t in months, almost a year now. But.”

Bucky said “That’s good.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

It took him a minute to realize what Steve was driving at, because. Of course. Steve got out of that body, he thought he’d be there forever but he got out, but he still thought he was there sometimes.

Bucky couldn’t imagine how weird that must feel. And yet. And YET.

 He kept expecting Steve to be like the old Steve too, and he wasn’t, Steve was this way forever and the Steve he’d been before was gone, so maybe he understood better than either of them thought. _Steve keeps expecting to still be Steve, for it to still hurt._

Bucky to go back to bed, but he was scared that would make Steve mad, or make Steve think _he_ was mad, and he wasn’t, he was just. Just. So mixed up and so tired.

He said, “I’m not mad, Steve.”

Steve said, “Oh. Okay. I didn’t think you were.”

Bucky said, “Oh. Uh. Good.” Didn’t they used to lie around and talk to hours?

He stared into the fire and felt empty and horrible and rattling and hollow and bruised and exhausted.

Steve was saying, “I’m not mad either, Buck.” Or something like that.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “Well. I should. I’m tired.”

Steve said, “We can go to bed, or. You can.”

Bucky didn’t feel like he could move.

“Buck? I—” Steve stopped, looked Bucky in the eye (he’d never liked looking people in the eye), then dropped his gaze to a button on Bucky’s coat, to his own fingers twirling the cigarette. “Anything I can do to help.”

Bucky shook his head.

Steve said, “Want a smoke?”

“Yes. Please.”

Steve offered immediately and Bucky took it. His hands were shaking, and Steve lit it and their noses almost touched. Bucky felt like something heavy was sagging down in his heart and straining its strength, like it would break and the heavy thing would land in his middle and he’d bust open, and he missed Steve so much but he was _right there_ , and at the same time he wasn’t, and maybe he could believe it was smoke that was making his eyes water and his nose run, and he said, “Nothing’s. The same and it’s really...”

He stopped and took a long drag.

Steve was patient, for once. He was just waiting to hear what came next.

But Bucky was done; his mouth was dry and his throat was closed and his nose was scraped and running, and Steve said, “It’s so strange.”

Bucky nodded and thought he was about to explode.

Steve cleared his throat awkwardly.

Bucky heard, more than he felt, himself start crying into his hand, hard, with snot and spit, and dropping his cigarette.

“Oh, shit,” he heard Steve say, and then a shifting of fabric and then Steve was holding him in a way he never had before, not even close, because he was enclosing him, shielding him, getting his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and tucking his chin over Bucky’s head, and just _holding_ , keeping him whole and still and singular and breathing, and sometime later they slipped into Steve’s tent and fell asleep face to face, they way they used to when they were little and had nightmares that were dispelled as easily as telling your best friend about it. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >The _zone libre_ and the _zone occupée_ refer to the free, unoccupied area of France versus the zone under direct German occupation. You can see a map [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Vichy_France_Map.jpg/800px-Vichy_France_Map.jpg%22).
> 
> >The man the boys are listening to on their radio is [Charles De Gaulle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle), the leader of La France Libre, the French government-in-exile during the Second World War. Free France was based in London and used the radio to rally, support, and organize the French Resistance back on the continent. 
> 
> >Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! While the use of chemical weaponry and particularly tear, mustard, and chlorine gas was mostly confined to the First World War, chemical warfare didn't end with the Armistice. 
> 
> >In _The First Avenger_ , Steve says his father died on "mustard gas." He doesn't say when, how, or why. For my purposes, I'm assuming Joseph Rogers was exposed to mustard gas and suffered long term respiratory and health effects that he succumbed to sometime in Steve's early childhood, which is why Steve associates the two so strongly. This correlation and Steve's visceral reaction was a suggestion of the truly brilliant [Vex](vextant.tumblr.com).
> 
> >Steve's family is from Adare because my family is from Adare. :•)  
>  
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Nous sommes américains. - "We're American."  
> Informzaione - information  
> Siamo americani. - "We're American."  
> Non ti faremo del mal. - "We won't hurt you."  
> Nous pouvons vous donner - "We can give you..."  
> Nouritture - food  
> Argent - money  
> Protection - protection  
> Abbiamo bisogno di informazioni. - "We need information."  
> Nous ne te ferons pas de mal. - "We won't hurt you."  
> Stiamo cercando tedeschi. - "We're looking for Germans."  
> Pasles troupes normales. - "Not the regular troops."  
> Des scientifiques - scientists  
> L'avenir - the future  
> Où les prennent-ils? - "Where do they take them?"  
> Nous savons pas. - "We don't know."  
> Que font-ils avec eux? - "What do they do with them?  
> Est-ce qu'ils reviennent? - "Do they come back?"  
> Jamais - never


	8. Chapter Seven: The Bullet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today; more tomorrow!

In the height of the summer, Steve took a bullet to the thigh.

It was six weeks since D-Day and the crushing momentum of the war was constant, desperate; it felt, most of the time, like they were running to catch up with their own troops, their own actions, their own war. Morita and Dernier both had radios, and the BBC was their constant companion, keeping them apace as the Allies unrolled the map of Europe as boldly as the Germans had rolled it up four years ago; the first Russian tanks had reached Poland, the Doodlebugs had damaged Peggy’s office in London so badly she, Stark, Phillips, and the rest of the SSR had transferred permanently to the continent. This didn’t soothe Steve’s worries much, but it did mean he didn’t spend every night making everyone listen to the reports from London and fretting about “Peg.” Which was nice.

And it wasn’t even anything good, it was some random starving fifteen-year-old German kid on the French border who cried when they caught him. Steve got shot by a kid. Bucky would have to tease him for it, soon.

But in the meantime, when he and Dernier staggered back from chasing down the snotty little teenager who’d begged them in garbled English to let him go (“Only kid! Only kid! Please, please, mistake, only kid, mistake, fuck Hitler, please!”), they found Steve, bloody but reasonably composed, telling Gabe very flatly, “No.”

“No, what?” said Bucky, discarding the German kid’s gun, making his way closer, relieved to see Steve so lucid, and holding out his hand blindly for a cigarette (which Falsworth immediately provided).

“We gotta,” said Dugan, and Bucky looked at Steve, then down at his thigh, which an hour ago had been purple and streaming blood, shredded by a bullet, and was now smooth and a mottled, ugly green and pink.

“Your leg,” said Dernier, lightly, but Bucky could hear the faint horror behind it. His own head was stuck on the magical healing of his broken jaw, the scalpels he knew had been in his belly and the smoothness of the same space now. But—

“Yes,” said Gabe. “But the bullet is inside. We have to, Steve.”

“No we don’t,” said Steve, and though he sounded authoritative, even angry, Bucky realized he was also, absolutely, and inescapably, wrong. The skin had healed, but the bullet—dirty, probably pilfered off a dying Soviet sentry and more importantly with its significant power to warp and infect and damage the interior of a human thigh—was still inside of Steve. And they had to cut it out.

“Yes, we do,” he said, looking at Steve. Steve looked back, and for the first time in a long time, he looked like himself, young and ruddy and big-eyed and scared. He didn’t want this to happen, he didn’t want to be brave, he didn’t want to have to throw himself full-throttled and red-blooded, he wanted Bucky to say no, Steve, you don’t have to do this, we’ll take you back to base and knock you out before we cut the bullet out of you.

But: they were six hours from a base if they moved at a breakneck pace, and Steve’s thigh would continue to change in color, continue to, Christ, regrow? Around the bullet? It couldn’t be a good idea. It couldn’t be something they could allow to happen.

“We don’t,” said Steve, pleading now, like when he was younger and got confused from fever and thought Bucky was someone else, thought something else was happening.

“We do,” Bucky said grimly, and patted Steve’s cheek once.

           

Later, neither Bucky or Steve—or, long after Bucky and Steve were both vanished from the record, any of the others present that day, though three of them went on to write memoirs—could clearly recall what exactly had gone on, or in what order. What was known was that Dernier and Dugan had taken Steve’s legs, that Morita and Falsworth had sat on his massive arms, that Gabe had been the one wielding the pen knife, that Bucky had knelt with one knee on either side of Steve’s head, stooped low and holding Steve’s red glistening face in an odd, demented parody of the way a lover would. Bucky had said nice things, Dernier had growled orders in French, Gabe had straddled Steve’s chest and dug around with the knife, Steve had screamed and tried to thrash with five strong men holding him down hard, and blood got everywhere. They seemed to be there for ages; at one point Bucky found himself thinking it couldn’t have possibly been less than an hour.

“Got it,” Gabe gasped, eventually, after an hour, a year, a lifetime, of Steve’s red face between Bucky’s hands, of Steve trying to close the corners of his mouth around Bucky’s fingers, of Steve’s shapeless, awful howls of pain. Gabe turned around and held his fingers, dark with blood, out for Bucky’s inspect. Sure enough: a comparatively long, copperish bullet, shiny even in the blood, glistened between his fingers.

“Shit,” gasped Morita, to Bucky’s left, and somehow, they all took that as a cue to topple off of Steve at once, panting like they’d been running. Bucky, whose forehead was next to Steve’s shoulder, reached out blindly and put his hand on top of poor Steve’s heaving chest, the way he used to when they were small and Steve couldn’t breathe, when they shared the bed, when they kept close for warmth and safety.

“Steve?” he said, into the empty noise of five men panting hard.

“Bucky?” Steve replied, a little wetly.

“Okay,” said Bucky, dumbly, “yeah.” He dug his face a little into Steve’s trembling shoulder and kept him together.

 

On the walk back to where they’d left the Jeep, Steve was hobbling, letting out little cusses and curses as they went. Even once they were in rattling along in the car, Steve winced and whined. There was something about it making Bucky nostalgic, making him almost forget where he was, and he couldn’t place it until—

“Oh, holy shit,” he said, unprompted.

Everyone looked at him.

“Your _accent_ ,” said Bucky.

There was a moment of quiet, and then Steve turned very red.

“Oh,” he said, his voice back to its well-rounded, transatlantic clip. “Yeah.”

“You don’t sound like you’re from _Brooklyn_ anymore!” Bucky said, laughing, accusatory; even as he said it, he felt himself slipping into the easy verbal lag: _you don’t sown’ like yow’ah from Brooklyn anymoaw!_ His accent had never been as strong as Steve’s—Steve really did have a cup of cawfee in the mornings—but his accent, such as it was, had been on the decline since he was fifteen or so and got self-conscious about it; by the time he’d finished up training in Wyoming, it was really just a New York accent, and barely that.

“I—I know. They made me fix it. For the USO,” Steve mumbled, his ears turning pink and his face getting ruddy with embarrassment.  Bucky felt laughter bubbling up out of him, wonderfully overpowering and light.

“What—did you get a little rap on the knuckles when you dropped an ‘r’?” he asked, smacking Steve’s knee for emphasis.

Steve sat up and grimly imitated a bored voice saying, “There is no ‘w’ in the word _bond_ , Mr. Rogers,” and Bucky almost fell over he was laughing so hard.

“You absolute _geek_ ,” he said, and Steve aimed a kick at his shin.

“This geek can kick your ass,” Steve returned, in full Brooklyn swagger, and he and Bucky smacked each other’s hands and laughed the whole way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >"Geek" is of the period. Neither "nerd" nor "dork" were yet in use, though Steve Rogers is, in fact, all three.
> 
> >Steve was probably trained to speak in the [transatlantic accent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent). His success is debatable. The dialect and accent a couple of Brooklyn boys like Steve and Bucky would have likely had is [rapidly dying out](https://www.npr.org/2015/02/02/383289958/fuhgeddaboudit-new-york-accent-on-its-way-out-linguists-say), but if you want to hear a sterling example of [New York English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_English#Notable_speakers), you should listen to Danny DeVito talk. I'm serious. It's wonderful.
> 
> >If it's six weeks since D-Day, this little interlude takes place in mid-August, 1944. Incidentally, the 74th anniversary of D-Day was this past week!


	9. Chapter Eight: The Train

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You knew it was coming.

That year for Christmas they all went back to England, to the pub in Houndsditch they’d become the Howling Commandos in, and drank themselves silly, and sang. Steve’s face wasn’t ruddy the way it used to get when they were younger and drowning in warm, cheap pilfered beer, but it was pink and he laughed so his teeth showed, and Bucky felt for the first time in a long time that he’d landed, and where he belonged no less. They were joined by Peggy Carter, who introduced a drinking game, and Howard Stark, who won it. They all promised to attend one another’s weddings and kiss one another’s newborn sons, someday. Each and every one of them kissed Peggy on the cheek, and Steve and Bucky showed everyone the Lindy Hop, which they’d learned together the summer of its vogue in a vain attempt to garner some female attention, and everyone laughed until it felt like the walls of the pub would come down.

Four days into the new year, the pub was destroyed by a V1, but everyone was already back on the Continent.

 

The plan was simple, and promised a kind of ruthless efficiency: Gabe and Dernier had it on good authority that Zola, with all his precious intel, was on a train hurtling through a Swiss Alps packed to the brim with weaponry and prototypes and the other sort of stuff Stark and the others would focus on, hell, Steve would focus on, but to Bucky it was only one thing: it was the train, with Zola on it. After over a year, after cyanide and cages and empty rooms, whispers about whispers and indecipherable notebooks, they were going to just make him stop. Make him stay still, get what they needed, put him in the cage. Put him somewhere he could never come find them, never put anyone else in the cage.

Morita had the radio. Gabe was telling them they were running out of time before the train arrived. Bucky felt his stomach writhe in real panic.

“Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?” he said, turning to Steve. They’d been twelve and thirteen, respectively; it was the summer before Bucky learned to fight from Uncle Rudy. Steve had been so small Bucky had been at least twenty-percent sure he was going to fly out of his car. They’d been belatedly celebrating Steve’s birthday.

“Yeah, and I threw up?” Steve grinned, and Bucky, feeling his own throat contract, remembered the way Steve had said “oh no” in the smallest, dumbest little voice, then hurled impressively on approximately everything.

“This isn’t payback, is it?”

“Now why would I want to do that?”

Steve’s grin, just his face, was essentially the same as it had been on Coney Island that baking-hot day in 1930, his serious caterpillar eyebrows and his teeth, not as crooked or yellow as they used to be, poking out through his funny little pink mouth. Bucky smiled at him.

“We were right,” Gabe said from behind them. “Dr. Zola’s on the train.” Bucky felt his stomach lurch, his hands grip hard. “Hydra dispatcher gave him permission to open up the throttle,” Gabe continued. “Wherever he’s going, they must need him bad.”

“Let’s get going, then,” Falsworth said, lowering his binoculars, and Bucky prepared to fly. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but the thought of Zola’s ugly owl face when he realized he was pinned was worth it. It would be worth it. It would. He wished he had gloves, as he saw Steve’s hands on the metal bar to ride the zipline, but his trigger finger mattered to him more. “They’re moving like the devil.”

“We only got about a ten-second window,” said Steve. “You miss that window, you’re bugs on a windshield.” Like Steve had ever even driven a car before a few months ago when they gave him the Jeep. Anyways—

“Better get moving, bugs!” called Dugan. Bucky loved these guys.

“Maintenant!” hollered Dernier.

Landing on the train took the thoughts out of his brain; the wind was frozen and whipping his face like a physical slap, again and again, and his stomach was riling. He just had to go. It was easy, follow Steve, _go_. Any door could have Zola behind it, and Steve was there, and Bucky was following. Stay next to Steve.

Of course, one car in, they were separated. Where was Gabe? Where was Zola? Where was _Steve_?

They were found. They were pinned. Where was Steve?

He ran out of ammo. Stupid pistol. Shit. Shit.

Well, this was it. He had the clear, singular, cold thought: _I am going to die._

He felt oddly ready.

And then Steve was back, of course he was, always Steve, always coming back, tossing him a pistol, a new one, and the idiot had his bright red shield and Bucky told Steve, “I had him on the ropes,” because that’s what they said to one another when they were relieved to see one another in the back end of a fight.

And for a moment, he wasn’t going to die. For a moment, it was just another scrap in an alley.

But then the sound of more guns, more people, and the cold ripped into the train, the wall peeled back like the top of a tin can, and he went with it, dropping the shiny silly Steve shield he’d found, and his hands closed on the rail of the inside-out train wall, and he whipped like a flag off the side of the mountain.

All he could think was how badly he wished he had gloves as his hands burned not he cold bar.

“Bucky! Hang on!”

He heard Steve’s voice on the wind. It was okay. Steve had gloves. They’d get back inside.

“Grab my hand!”

Okay. But the bar wouldn’t hold.

“Buck grab on!”

Sorry, bug—!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >V-1 flying bombs, also referred to as Doodlebugs in the previous chapter, were German bombs that assaulted London and other Allied strongholds in the latter years of the war.
> 
> >Bucky's dates are, as always, maddening to pin down, so I've set his death in early 1945.


	10. Chapter Nine: The Winter Solider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over text not in English to see translations. There will also be translations in the end notes.
> 
> Warnings for violence, torture, abuse, dehumanization, and all that Winter Solider stuff.

_Wham!_

Crunch.

Uh-oh.

 

They drag him out of the snow. It’s okay. Somebody—god Christ god his head—somebody saw—somebody. Steve. Saw. So they’ll come get him.

 

 

They keep bandages over his eyes for a long time.

 

Somebody saw him fall. Steve, and the guys. Steve saw, so. So. So somebody’s coming.

 

           

How long has it been

 

 

“Liebling.” Oh, no.

 

 

“I don’t have any information.”

“I don’t want any information.”

 

 

They keep him in a tiny cell, no room to lie down, the light never goes off, the noise never stops; it’s cold or hot and he’s so hungry and greasy and the water is brown. But he’s counting on the wall. His fingernails break scratching. It’s okay.

 

 

Please please please

 

 

The paper says “Rogers Disappears.” It’s fake. It’s  _fake_ , take it away. Take it away. They won’t take it away.

 

 

He can’t remember why he can’t sleep but his eyes are burning salty wounds dry sand salt hurts hurts dirty hurts it all hurts head hurts voices too slow too loud _please_ —

 

 

They come back for guys like me, he thinks, no man left behind.

“Who comes back?”

He doesn’t _know_.

 

 

The paper says “Rogers Disappears.” He can’t remember what it means but he won’t let them take it. _Please_ , he just needs to sleep.

 

 

They have ideas about sleep. They teach him.

 

Help me help me help me help me help me help me

 

 

No man left behind, they said!

“You’re not a man,” someone chides him.

 

 

The feeling of electricity is blue and deep and skin shivering deep into the skin like it’s too loose on his bones. Somebody was going to come for him.

He’s good, he’s good at shooting guys. They know that. They want him to shoot guys. When he does he gets to keep his fingernails.

 

 

Don’t worry, liebling. We have lots of medicine for you.

 

 

They saw into his bone and he is awake. He screams until it feels like all of him has flung out of his mouth and floats around the room in writhing pieces.

 

 

The revolution will require the right circumstances. The wrong people can’t stay. They teach him.

 

 

“Posture. Earn that arm. I won’t remind you again. Line up the shot. Good.”

 

 

It _hurts_. It’s supposed to?

 

 

Mama?

 

 

“What are you talking about? The war ended two years ago.”

 

_32557308_ is scratched into the side of his skull inside he can hear it and doesn’t know what it means.

 

           

Help me help me help me help me help me

 

 

Good for more than shooting. _Extract_. Information. Keep saying the same words, and keep doing the same things, until we tell you to stop. Easy enough. The smell is like copper on and on. _I remember that_ , but don’t say it, because keep saying the same words we _gave_ you, soldier. “Govorit’. My ostanovimsya.” _That’s a lie_. It doesn’t matter. Just do what they say. _They won’t stop_. Oh, what would you know.

 

 

Heartbeat too fast in the throat. Fix that. Take aim.

 

 

Inside his head a newspaper that says “_____ Disappears” and he sees it floating into pieces of dust in the air.

 

 

An infection clouds his throat. He remembers: they found him with his throat tied up, in scraps of bedsheets and bandages strung together into a rope. Hold the neck. Why had he done that?

“Vy ne mozhete vmeshivat’sya v moyu sobstvennost’, soldat,” tsks the major in his head. They held a different rope there for a long time. _You’ll learn_ , they said. He learned.

 

 

“Doktor Zola zdes’.” The ground seems to disintegrate. Later, he sits and Doktor Zola inspects him, talks to him. “I’ve been in Brooklyn, liebling. Do you know what that means?”

_Liebling is you_ , he remembers. He doesn’t know what any other part means. He shakes his head.

“Good boy.”

 

 

When he is disobedient they sometimes lock him inside small small rooms with the bodies. They do it when he is obedient too. He cannot remember the last time he was disobedient. How can he—

When it gets dark enough the bodies writhe and crawl and pry his jaw open, drip their rotting parts down his throat, reach inside of him and crush what’s inside with their rictus-hands.

He screams, and screams, and then he will find himself alone, the bodies silent and still again.

 

 

Puncture the lung and it fills up, so they can’t scream, and die quiet. Good soldier.

 

 

He is waiting for nightfall next to a building with tall colored windows. A church, in _____. He is waiting for his handler, waiting for nightfall. In his coat pockets he has hair and skin and blood in the slats of his arm.

“Kak vas zovut?”

What. Electricity in the veins. Oh, no. No no no.

Someone speaking. To him. Look in the eyes. Don’t like it, look in the eyes _anyways_.

“Ser? S toboy vse v poryadke? Kak vas zovut?”

_Kak vaz zovut? What is your name?_

_Bez imeni. No name. No name, no name, no name, no name, no name, no name, no name no name no name no name no name no name no name no name no name no name_

“Soldat.” Voice angry. Trouble now. Oh, no—no name. No name. Legs wet—kneeling in the snow. Handler shaking shoulder. Did bad. Did bad, didn’t you? You, you. You. Soldat.

 

 

“Oh, liebling. This may be the last time I see you for quite some time. You’ll miss me, won’t you?”

Miss—?

He doesn’t miss shots. Never.

“No?”

He gets slapped. That’s what you get for thinking you can think.

 

 

Limbs rubber. Head heavy. So _cold_.

 

 

The first time he hears someone talking in the streets after they leave the safe house in _____ it jars inside his head, sticks, rattles. He turns to his handler, frowns inquiringly, doesn’t ask.

Later he remembers they are speaking English. It is good, then, that he knows English.

But he thinks he remembers getting punished for English, too.

 

 

Even when he is sleeping nowhere near the bodies they come and crawl over him and leave their trails of decomposing skin stuck to him like ink.

 

 

Head just white, white, white with pain.

 

 

Infection chokes his chest, worse than before, and a wound by the shoulder yields thick strings of white and green and yellow pus around fat clumps of pink, cystic skin from inside. He’s _burning up with fever_. Like. Like. Like. Like he used to. Who used to. He used to get fevers, who did. Someone used to say _you’re burning up with fever_ , someone used to get fevers, but. But. Who—

They cut him open and give him a better skeleton for his gift arm. They do not let him sleep when they do.

 

 

He shoots the man in the open car in ____. Perfect shot. He can distantly hear shouting, but stays where he was told to stay in the grass. By the time he is extracted it is late, and he is kicked in the ribs for pissing himself.

“Leave him alone,” someone says. “He made the shot of the century today.”

 

 

Cold rubber limbs. He was _dreaming_. Forgot that word. Dreaming about: wood floor, old stove, radio. “Teach me to dance,” says _____. Forgot the dream. Time to come out.

 

 

He has been briefed to pretend to be “a mercenary.” He has been taught to speak Norwegian. He speaks to people, and they ask questions he has rehearsed answers to. Like name, and where from, and other things that are confusing. It is almost like a game, pretending to be a person, in ______.

Then they come to take him back to the ice, and he hopes he will get to pretend again.

 

 

They pull out his teeth and give him new ones. He is awake. He has a tug in the corner of his brain about a pill inside a tooth. He tries to find it. He gets in big trouble.

 

 

______ is getting big in his britches. The soldier expertly breaks each finger.        

 

 

“Attention, ladies and gentlemen, this is the last stop on this train.”

A woman shakes a tiny boy, blond, small, once, twice. “Up, hon. End of the line.”

Something detaches itself in his chest and his limbs feel like recent-electricity, moving of their own accord. _End of the line_ , somebody said, and he wants. He wants. He wANTS.

But it’s like static.

It isn’t until later when they’re driving through ____ somebody spots the leak on his face and demands the source of the malfunction. He has no idea.

 

 

“Help me,” begs the woman and he makes her quiet quick and hears help me help me help me round and round in the wires in his head for a long time after until they put him back into the cold.

 

The faces change so much between sleep, and then sometimes they vanish altogether. Other things are funny, too. He sees in another street where there is English after he has wrapped the neck of ____ in piano wire, he sees a person with so much hair he cannot tell if it is a woman or a man. He doesn’t ask.

 

 

 “Oh, don’t worry. It can barely tell we’re here.”

 

 

Pull the nail out of the bed slowly, so each tiny speck of newly-exposed wrinkled secret skin feels the air, knows it is being torn open. He knows this. Can’t remember how.

 

They say he is going to Doctor-Arnim-Zola. The name makes something move in his stomach.

Doctor-Arnim-Zola is a voice in a room that whirs. He shakes and shakes and doesn’t know why.

He doesn’t ask, but the voice in the room that is Doctor-Arnim-Zola tells him anyways that it isn’t his job to think.

 

 

He breaks a rib with a hammer. He has been on the table, but now he is standing, and the hammer is breaking the man’s rib, and he is repeating his question patiently. He won’t understand the answer. It isn’t for him. He is holding the hammer but he is not really the one.

 

 

Somebody holds out a piece of meat on a fork and laughingly tells him to put it on his tongue. It’s red and he thinks of the bodies. (They still come.) The feeling in his mouth is so foreign and squishy. (“He normally takes food only intravenously.”) He is leaking from the mouth and the eyes and doesn’t know what is happening.

 

 

To prove he is loyal, he fires an unloaded pistol at his temple, at the instructions of a handler.

“Surely he knew it wasn’t loaded.”

He didn’t. But how would shooting himself in the temple prove he was loyal? He’s very loyal. He thinks _hail hydra_ every time he breathes, sometimes.

 

 

He knows bodies well. He knows the insides. He wonders if his are pink and slick like that. He doubts it. 

 

 

“Becca!” somebody yells in the street in _____, and his body stutters, stops, _Becca!_ , what. What. What.

He wants to follow the voice that said Becca but he can’t and then the static eats his brain and hums _no name no name no name no name no name no name_

 

 

Every time the halo in the chair makes the sound of the electricity he is scared. He knows it is to make him better, but he is scared every time.

 

 

He is waiting in a hotel room in ____ and someone has left the television on. He left to go with a lady, the handler, he probably wasn’t supposed to but it is not the soldier's job to tell him. It is hot, his head is static. The television is saying that next up on the hour in celebration of the you ess will continue with walter cronkite followed by special performance by the university of north texas one o’clock lab band at the steve rogers memorial in prospect park at the steve rogers memorial in prospect park at the steve rogers memorial in prospect park at the steve rogers memorial in prospect park     

his head is all static and he is standing on a hot street corner, he does not know where prospect park is or what the steve rogers memorial is but he wants. he wanTS to go there, he isn’t supposed to be able to want he isn’t supposed to want _stupid greedy selfish thing_ but he WANTS it

he doesn’t know how he comes to be in the grass or where the grass is but it’s dark and his skin is chapped and he is all alone which isn’t supposed to happen but really, happens all the time

then he isn’t alone and they are dragging him, and then everything is white white white and hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts and he forgets what made it hurt but he’ll never ever ever do it again

 

 

“If the yelling gets annoying, just stick the muzzle on it.”

“I don’t see a muzzle.”

“Then tape its mouth shut, I don’t give a fuck, I’m going home.”

 

 

The bodies still come.

 

 

He is alone with the computer named arminzola and he can’t hear anything but his heart in his ears and the whirring and _what are you afraid of?_ Don’t know don’t know

 

 

ready to comply ready to comply ready to comply

 

 

He does not know what _perestroika_ is but it is making the general frown and the soldier must not fail to obtain the ____, because the americans need to know who is still in charge of the goddamn winter soldier

When the man in the road says “sergeant barnes?” the name makes his brain stitch and wriggle and tug

He asks the general during the mission report and the general tells him he sounds like he needs maintenance

 

The other winter soldiers are allowed to hit him and he isn’t allowed to hit back. they ask him "Where are you from?">“otkuda ty?” and “kak vas zovut?” and laugh when he doesn’t have anything to say.

“Did Hydra make you?” 

yes.

 

 

It isn’t a punishment to be sent away they tell him and the general says “my budem skuchat’ po tebe, soldat,” and the soldier doesn’t know what that would feel like

 

Help me help me help me help me help me

 

 

He meets the Director in a hotel room in ____ and money changes hands. The director runs his fingers through the soldier’s hair, and this is how the soldier realizes he has so much.

“Your work has been a gift to mankind,” the Director says, as he dispassionately inspects the inside of the soldier's mouth.

 

 

The Director’s face reminds him of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of of

 

 

The calendar starts with 200—

that doesn’t—seem—

 

 

 

He is waiting for the handler and somebody is there and asking him a question like “do you need help?” and help me help me help me help me help me—

Brain is static and the woman bent over him crumples and the handler grabs him by the neck

Later in the van his mouth is forced open and a knife hovers over his tongue for so long he forgets if they cut it off or not and it doesn’t matter help me help me help me

 

 

Hurts hurts hurts

Stop whining it’s supposed to

Order through pain, soldier.

 

 

The end is nigh, soldier.

 

 

The man on the bridge has a face that make the soldier’s head elastic and writhing, because—because—because—because—because mission.

 

 

“Bucky?”

Who the hell is Bucky.

 

 

It’s time to disappear, he thinks, and he is very good at that. He knows just where to go so his owners will find him and he can do the mission.

 

 

On the bridge in ____, his arm was damaged and he needs maintenance. His head disintegrates and floats, and he listens to it until it gets too tight and bright and stinging and then he is panting and has hit the technician and oh they will make him pay for that, and then the director is talking to him.

“Th-the man on the bridge,” he says, carefully. He thought of each word already, because it is hard to say words, because his tongue is always heavy. “I knew him.”

_It’s not your job to know things_ , he thinks, and the director tells him to be good, but, but. But I knew him.

The director hits him, and the time comes to wipe him, and he knows he needs it but the body is afraid every single time.

 

 

The man says things on the airplane, things later the soldier will marshal together and try to make sense of, beads on a fragile string. _Friend. All your life. Know me. James Buchanan Barnes_. But it’s wrong. No name no name no name nO NAME NO NAME NO NAME.

The man pins him under a beam and then comes back for him. His brain is liquid and everything is loud and blooming bright white light like the pain in his head all the time and the man is breaking underneath him, the man’s face is shattering beneath him, he can feel the man’s body weakening and feels an eye socket break under his fist and _good_ , he knows what he is for.

“You’re my friend,” says the man, and that is empty and hollow and pops over the soldier like a tinkling glass bubble.

“You’re my mission,” he says, because he knows what he is for.

“Then finish it,” says the man. “Cuz I’m with you till the end of the line.”

Till the end of the line the soldier finishes it he lets the bridge man fall into the water to drown with his eye socket broken and his jaw broken and his body full of bullets he can finish it he’ll finish it till the end of the line james buchanan friend my friend till the end of my friend james buchanan barnes I’m not going to fight you you’re my friend.

The soldier doesn’t decide to tip himself into the water as the plane crashes, but the body is going, following the bridge man till the end of the line and he drags the limp heavy body out of the water and watches it bubble out river water and foamy pink blood

Till the end of the line you’re my friend name James Buchanan Barnes I’m not gonna fight you, _I know him_ , what’s his name, what’s his name, your name is James Buchanan Barnes no what’s YOUR name what’s your name who ARE you till the end of the line who the hell are you?

More pink foam and water dribbles pitifully from the bridge man’s mouth. He will die here, surely. His ribs are broken. They have punctured his lung, from the sound he is making as his stupid body tries helplessly to breathe when it would be better, so much better, to just stop.

The soldier wants to touch his face, to see what it feels like, _what does that mean_ , he isn’t supposed to want, and then he hears footsteps and he hears voices, and a wriggling fire skitters up his legs and grips him it is time to run he has to run he must, must, must get away before the footsteps find him in the mud with the man from the bridge. Don’t touch. Run.

It is time to disappear. He is very, very good at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >Bucky sees a program hosted by Walter Cronkite during the bicentennial celebration of the US in 1976. Everything he mentions really happened, it just didn't happen at Steve Rogers Memorial Park (which I imagine is in Brooklyn).
> 
> **Translations**  
>  Govorit’. My ostanovimsya. = "Talk. We'll stop."  
> Vy ne mozhete vmeshivat’sya v moyu sobstvennost’, soldat. = "You musa’t harm my property, solider."  
> Doktor Zola zdes - "Doctor Zola is here."  
> Kak vas zovut? - "What is your name?"  
> Ser? S toboy vse v poryadke? Kak vas zovut? - "Sir? Are you alright? What’s your name?"  
> Bez imeni - Mo name  
> Otkuda ty? - "Where are you from?"  
> My budem skuchat’ po tebe, soldat. - “We’ll miss you, solider.”


	11. Chapter Ten: The Asset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for vomit/diarrhea, panic attacks/trauma, etc. 
> 
> Hover over text not in English to see translations. They will also be listed in the end notes.

A lot of things were on fire; later, he would recall this with a kind of dazed alarm—he’d barely noticed, though. All that he felt as he left the riverbank was the ground under his feet, squelching then hardening as he made his way into the trees. The world was narrowed down to a pinprick: his broken arm throbbing, the need to keep walking. The words cascading around in his head like the dirty river water. _Walk. Don’t let anybody see._ That’s all there was. He’d—he’d botched the mission, so he’d be in trouble.

But, of course, it hit him: the _mission_. They’d come to get him, fix him so he’d be better next time. But then they’d clean out his head with the blue and the white and crackle and he wouldn’t have to wonder about all the river water words anymore.      

Extraction. Sit. Sit down. _They’ll come_ , he thought, if he waited for them they’d come get him eventually.

 

He could hear sirens, and helicopters. Nobody came into the woods. It was getting dark.

 

Night came and the sun rose again. Once, a helicopter flew right over with the lights down into the trees. The soldier concealed himself and kept waiting. He tried his radio but it didn’t work, not even the third backup channel. So he waited.

 

The sun went down and came up several more times. Nobody came. The soldier eventually stood up. His legs were cramped and heavy; there was a long-dried, bad-smelling spot in the inner seam of his pants because he had pissed. Everything itched from the river water drying and his clothes smelled like mud. Nobody had come.

(“If you fuck up,” a face said inside his head, “we’re gonna leave you right there to die. Nobody’s coming back for your ass.”)

(But: _your work has been a gift to mankind_?)

(But: “you’re worthless if you don’t do what you’re told,” someone snarled, close to his face, crushing his windpipe, _sorry sorry sorry_ —)

Nobody had come. The soldier walked in a few small circles and thought.

The man from the mission was _surely_ dead—why wouldn’t he die, why did he take so long? But the soldier had crushed most of his face. Which meant the mission was good. The man said things that flitted through the soldier’s head like bugs in a jar. _You’re my friend till the end of the line you’ve known me all your life your name is_ —

He shook his head and they rattled. Puppy got fleas.

The soldier hoped somebody would come for him soon. He needed to clean out his head.

           

Sun down, sun up. Six times altogether. The soldier’s body was stiff and hollow like a physical presence. He knew he slept but never for long. He thought. He tried the radios again. Nothing but static.

He was going to be in so much trouble.

 

Finally, he started to walk. What else could he do?

  

It wasn’t not too cold outside—later, he’d know it was already April—but the soldier couldn’t stop shivering. He walked until the trees ended, and then he moved more slowly, stayed clear of cameras and eyes. He could leave no trace; he was only ever seen when he was supposed to be. He didn’t know for sure, and figured that meant stay low.

His arm wasn’t hurting as much but it felt heavy and puffy and dangly all the time, and the other arm was, he knew, distracting. People could see it, and that wasn’t good unless he was trying to scare them. Was this still a mission?

The night after he got out of the trees he was in a boiler room and found a jacket. He took it. It wasn’t thick but it felt so warm he never wanted to take it off, even if his chest thrummed with pain for a long time after he stuffed his floppy puffy bad arm inside of the sleeve. The man from the bridge had broken his arm. He didn’t want to have to lie still while they fixed that, but it would be okay, because afterwards, they’d take it all out of his head and put him away, probably. It wasn’t the most comforting, but it was familiar, and the words pinging around in his head hurt. It would be nice when they were quiet and everything was just blue and white and nothing.

He slept behind the boilers. It was loud in a way that was quiet—just a continuous roar. No voices. No pinging words. But he left soon, because the bodies found him in the boiler, and they pried his jaw open and scraped their rotting skin off into his mouth and up his nose and stuck their yellow fingernails into his eyes. So when it got dark again, he had to leave.

He found a big box full of rotting things and didn’t want to touch it, but then when he was hiding from someone, he saw them throw things inside that looked. Looked like. Like.

What was it. What.

Pitaniye. Oh, sweet Christ. His body _churned_ at the thought, with half-forgotten painful crushing hunger, like a cinder block in his belly but empty and yearning.

As soon as there were no people he scrambled to the box and looked it over. Black plastic bags, open one, and—

Oh, sweet _Christ_. A clear plastic film, inside were six _whole_ white rolls, round and perfect but for kitty-cornered mold spidering between two of them, and not even much, the smallest tiniest little baby mold the soldier ever saw. It had been—been—he didn’t know about eating food this way, but he cracked his jaw opened a shut a few times and heard a fairly definitive _clack_ ; there were teeth in there. They’d chew. He swallowed empty air twice and found he could do that too. The port they usually used to feed him remained useless on his belly under his clothes. For a moment, he thought about crushing the bread up against it, or maybe wetting it with his saliva then pushing it through. It didn’t seem like it would work.

_Clack, clack_ , said his jaw, when he tried again. That would do.

He scrambled off with the bag and ate every single one of the perfect barely moldy breads one after the other. It was very, very good.

 

Later, his belly cramped like a vice and acid came up his throat and he had a terrible painful der’mo in the cramped bathroom off the boiler room, and it hurt, but the bodies didn’t come while he was there, and on the way out afterwards he found a hat.

 

He found more food in the rot-boxes ( _dumpster_ , his brain sometimes bounced back at him) and sometimes, he didn’t even get sick after. And nobody saw him taking it, and the bodies only found him at one more of his sleeping-places.

 

With his jacket and his hat, he could walk with normal people and almost pass for one. It was like in the Congo when he pretended to be from Norway; he even said “unnskyld meg” when he walked into a woman, because he remembered he could and it helped to pretend to be a person now, remembering another time he pretended.

But when he was pretending to be from Norway in the Congo he’d had a Mission; now, he had none, and no gun, and no orders, and it was different and hollow, so mostly he just walked around. It was warm, just weakly but the sunshine was enough. The soldier walked and avoided eyes. Once, he saw the Director’s face on a television through a window, but he couldn’t hear. He tried to call the Director on a payphone, but the phone number he thought he remembered didn’t connect to anything.

One morning he walked and saw another face, not the Director’s but—the bridge man’s. On a big blue sign, the bridge man’s face and the words “Captain America: the Living Legend & Symbol of Courage, _now at the Smithsonian through December 2014_.”

( _ARE YOU READY TO FOLLOW CAPTAIN AMERICA INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH?_ )

The soldier’s legs stopped, his eyes fixed on the bridge-man, seen on the banner in profile, in black and white. The banner directed him inside, and then through a plastic grey arc that someone called a “metal detector.” He tensed up, sure such a thing would detect his arm and he’d be in trouble—maybe returned to his handlers?—but he passed through without incident. A woman in a green vest told him to have a nice time. He started and then remembered he was pretending to be a person.

“Th-thank you,” he mumbled, and felt his face get warm, but he didn’t know why. He looked around and didn’t see any more banners with the bridge man. 

His confusion must have shown in his face, because the lady in the vest said chirpily, “Can I help you with anything, sir?”

He didn’t realize “sir” was him until she said it again, looking right into his face. It felt like a long time since anybody had done that, except the bridge man. Who. Well.

“Bridge—uh. Cap. Captain America?” 

She smiled. “Right through there, follow the signs for ‘special exhibitions,’ okay, hon?” 

He nodded, her face feeling too close and her voice too loud, and he nodded hard again so he could leave. 

He followed the signs for “special exhibitions” and then for “Captain America: Courage & Legacy,” and then he was inside, and the bridge man’s face was everywhere, and all of it was pulling and pulling at his brain and it hurt, the word-fleas were throwing themselves at the side of his head hard and it _hurt_ , and he saw a lot of names and places in a jumble that rattled harder in his head, _Brooklyn_ and _Steve_ _Rogers_ and _Joseph and Sarah Rogers_ and _107 th Infantry Regiment_, _Erskine_ , _Rebirth_ , _Howling_ _Commandos_. They pinged around and scraped and his brain felt full of static and melting elastic, and he kept walking because his legs didn’t know what else to do. There were pictures of faces, and long strings of words his eyes couldn’t take in, and a motorcycle. He liked the motorcycle, but he didn’t stay near it because if he stayed still the static got worse. He tried to avoid the eyes of the pictures the way he would real people. He and the pictures, though, he thought suddenly, were the same. Not-real people. Not people. 

There was a corner that was dark, and it had a single big picture and some words, and the picture was of a face and the words said “A Fallen Comrade.”

**When Bucky Barnes first met Steve Rogers on the playground in Brooklyn,** it said, underneath, and those were flea-words, all of them, _Bucky_ - _Barnes_ and _Steve_ - _Rogers_ and _Brooklyn_ , **he couldn’t have known he was forming a bond that would take him to the battlefields of Europe and beyond.  
**

**James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes** _your name is James Buchanan Barnes  
_

**Born on March 10 th, 1917, Barnes grew up the oldest child of four **_Becca? Twins_ **to George and Winifred Barnes.** _Mom?_ **An excellent athlete who also excelled in the classroom,** _c’mon, Barnes, stay off your back—the curvature of the earth_ **Barnes enlisted in the army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.** _a date that shall live in infamy_ — _draft office_ **After winter training at Camp McCoy,** _it’s cold as balls out here Steve I swear to god_ **WI, Barnes and the rest of the 107 th shipped out to the Italian front. **_mud everywhere_

**After his unit was captured by Hydra** _hail hydra hail hydra hail hydra_ **troops later that fall, Barnes endured isolation,** _help me help me_ **deprivation,** _help me help me help me_ **and torture** _help me help me help me help me help me_ **with the other inmates at the infamous Industrielle Waffen Factory Prison** _cages_ **in Kitzbühel, Austria. In November of 1943, the prison camp was fatefully liberated by none other than Barnes’s childhood friend Steve Rogers,** _I thought you were smaller_ **now Captain America.** _ARE YOU READY TO FOLLOW CAPTAIN AMERICA INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH?_

**Reunited,** _Steve_ **Barnes joined Captain America’s newly formed unit, the Howling Commandos,** _Gabe?_ **comprised mostly of those liberated from the Factory Prison and dedicated to the eradication of Hydra.** _hail hydra hail hydra hail hydra_ **Barnes’s remarkable marksmanship** _the Napoleon of landing lead between somebody’s eyebrows_ **was invaluable to the team as Rogers and his men destroyed Hydra** _hail hydra_ **bases and disrupted Nazi troop movements across the European theater.  
**

**Barnes was killed in action on January 19 th, 1945, in Switzerland. ** _Liebling, I’m not German—I’m Swiss_ **He was twenty-seven years old, and the only member of the Howling Commandos to give his life in service of his country.  
**

The static was wailing inside the soldier’s head. It wouldn’t stop, it was an air raid siren, it swallowed him whole, it consumed him and wrapped him and smothered him where he stood until he was nothing but a buzzing radio signal caught between wires, stalled endlessly, never transmitting anything but raw roaring empty static, endless whiteness, nothing nothing nothing at all.

“Sir?”

The soldier jumped so badly he nearly fell to the floor; his legs like hollow buzzing liquid hurting and his heart climbing out of his reinforced vibranium steel _finest there is soldier_ ribcage to splat onto the floor. His shoulder. Not the metal one. The other. Somebody was. Touching. Touching his shoulder. It felt too warm, too heavy.

“Sir, we’re closing now. Do you have someone you’re here with?”

_She’s asking where your handler is_.

He tried to make his mouth work and couldn’t.

“Sir? Are you alright? Do you need an interpreter?”

_English isn’t allowed sometimes_.

He tried again to talk and made a noise like someone who had just finished vomiting. His eyes were hot.

“Oh—oh dear. Honey, are you here with somebody? Is there somebody I can call for you?”

He shook his head. The Director didn’t answer. His radio didn’t transmit. There was nobody to call, they’d, they’d— _decommissioned_ him.

“Are you okay?”

“Have to go,” he mumbled, and then his strange shuddering legs were carrying him out of the hall and out of the building and through the metal-detecting arches and down the street, heart hammering, gut writhing, face wet and shivers wracking his limbs, static swallowing him and roaring and he stopped and stared at the ground and panted and felt his face crumpling and his eyes streaming and remembered the word was _cry_.

He tried to call a phone number again. When nothing worked, he tried the other number crawling around inside his head on spindly scratchy legs, which was 32557380, but that turned out to not even be a phone number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >I edited Bucky's Smithsonian panel because the one in the movie was weird.
> 
>  
> 
> **Translations**  
>  Pitaniye - food  
> Der'mo - shit


	12. Chapter Eleven: The Traveler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over text not in English to see a translation. They will also be in the end notes.

The soldier found another place to sleep, quiet and empty and not too cold, but the bodies found him. He moved, and they found him, every time; they swarmed him like always, pried open his jaw and vomited long strings of bile mixed with rotting organs and pulsing insects down his throat. They clawed at his eyelids until they were gone and he could never look away, had to watch as they sliced him open from the sternum down past his belly, cracking ribs with their palms as they went, past his navel and down to his genitals, which they severed and crushed, before ripping him open and plucking away his insides, which were glistening not with blood but with gun oil, and tore those apart as well.

Then he always found himself alone, whole again but shaking, watched, wondering how they found him, how they kept doing this. Had his handlers sent them? To punish him for running away? _Hail Hydra, hail Hydra, I tried to wait! I tried to go back! I can’t find the Director!_ —and it wasn’t _fair_ , he’d tried to go back and now he was decommissioned, maybe, and in any case he was going to be in so much trouble, but the mission made his head split and wriggle and writhe like an animal needed to be put out of its misery, and then things like the bridge-man banner and _Bucky Barnes_ and  _Howling Commandos_ and _Steve Rogers_ wouldn’t stop swirling in his head no matter how he shook it to clear it, and he needed it cleaned out but the thought of the chair and the electricity still made his heart flip over inside his half-metal chest.

It hit him one warm morning as he was rooting through a rot-box—a dumpster— _he didn’t want to go back_.

The thought was so striking, so confusing, that he stood still for a long time, rocking slightly on his heels, absorbing it.

He whispered, “Don’t w-want. Want to go back.”

He wasn’t supposed to _want_ anything.

But he didn’t want to go back, and he didn’t want the bodies to keep finding him everywhere he found to hide.

The soldier was not meant to think for himself, but that did not mean he was not smart. He was tactical; he was methodical. He knew how to move without being seen, how to watch without being noticed, how to find places nobody looked and to assess every person he saw and their threat level to him. He knew how to get a bullet between the eyebrows at quite some distance. ( _Barnes’s remarkable marksmanship was invaluable to the team as Rogers and his men destroyed—_ ) He suspected, now, that he had a follower, or many; the bodies, his handlers. Hydra. Someone else? It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let them find him.

The answer, then, was simple, and also something the soldier knew how to do. Lose the tail.

The best way to disappear is to put an ocean behind you, the soldier thought, and so he followed the river.

 

He found a cargo ship that was loading; cargo ships were good, because they have large sections no human enters between departure and arrival. And they travel great distances, and often unload at several different places, the soldier was fairly sure, and that meant he could probably slip off somewhere and never let his shadow be any the wiser.

It probably wasn’t the best plan, but that didn’t matter. _What matters is getting away_. So he spent the rest of the night rustling between dumpsters until he had most of a loaf of bread and some brown bananas and a bottle to put water in, and then at dawn he slipped onto the ship, so easily he wondered if anybody could really see him or if he’d turned invisible without anybody to maintenance him.

 

On the boat he was hungry and alone in the dark, and the bodies found him. But so did words, loud funny ones that rung and hung in the air like mist and swirled around him like a cocoon, _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes_ and _Steve_ and _Bucky_ and _mom_ and _Becca_ and _Ruthie and Lil_ and _the 107 th _and _Bucky_ and _till the end of the line_ and _friend_ and _Brooklyn_ and _Barnes_ and _liebling_ and _friends_ and _Steve? Steve? Steve?_

The food he brought didn’t last very long and some of it made his stomach churn and hurt and he threw up, but at least threw up in the same place where he’d been doing his other business so it was easy enough to just avoid it altogether. In the quiet he slept a lot, and the echoing silence ate his head, so he tried to talk. It was hard, and he couldn’t think what to say.

He hummed a bit. That was okay, and it helped his voice feel like it would work.

What did he want. Want to say?

He wanted. Hmm. To eat? To. To be left alone. To know what the words mean? To. Hmm.

“Nnn. Nuh. _Name_.”

The silence seemed to blink back at him; he felt flushed and stupid, squirmy. The darkness provided no name. He was _not_ supposed to have a name. He was no-name, it was important. Kak vas zovut? Bez imeni. Bez imeni. Kak vas zovut? Soldat.

“Soooooooo. Luh. Sol- _dat_.” 

The silence didn’t much care.

“Jay-mez B _yuuue_ -cannon-BaRNes.”

Quiet.

“Bucky.”

Quiet.

“Steeeeeeeee. Steve.”

Quiet.

“Hail Hydra.”

Quiet.

“Pomogi mne.”

Quiet.

“Leeeeave. Leee-uh- _ve_ me ah-LONE.”

Quiet.

“Fuh- _reeeeend_.”

Quiet.

“POGOMI MNE!”

Quiet.

“Heeh. He _lp_ me.”

Quiet.

“Steeeeeve.”

Quiet.

“Buuuuuuuuh-keeeey.”

Quiet.

“Nobody’s home.”

 

A rat crawled up his leg, then back down it. Up and down, up and down. The soldier didn’t mind, though it made him think about when he was in the hole which was not very good to think about because his hands would shake and his throat would feel closed, so he resolved to avoid thinking about the hole and think about the rat instead, who was scurrying over his pants. Sorry, little rat. Food’s all gone.

“Sorry,” he said into the darkness, and the rat froze and quivered then continued its little exploration of the soldier’s legs.

Was it still a soldier?

“No food, little guy,” he said, and where. _Little guy._ He liked that phrase, it had surfaced with a pleasant kind of _pop_ at the top of his brain from the deep deep waters inside. Little-guy. _Easy there, little guy. C’mon, breathe when I breathe, the coughing will stop soon, I promise_.

Who said that? Who was the little guy?        

“Am I the little guy?” he asked the rat. The rat scurried off his leg and perched on his boot. “Maybe it’s Steve Rogers,” he added.

Why was that? Steve-Rogers the bridge man had been big. But he was little before, when he was a kid. The museum said.

The soldier played back everything the museum had said inside his brain again and again until it unspooled, and then he didn’t know where the rat was.

 

The boat stopped. The soldier slunk out, and heard voices curled in accents that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He knew that kind of voice.

He was, he discovered, in Liverpool. He’d never been there before, probably. He didn’t actually know.

He’d been in England. He’d been in England, he knew—in a hospital, in a—a pub. Nice Peggy Carter, the jaws of death. _Bucky, wake up, you’re in London_.

He pushed his hair out of his face. When did it get so long? Could he get to the pub from here? The pub in—Houndsditch? Where. Where.

 _Where we used to sing_ , he thought, and couldn’t imagine where such a thought came from.

 _We used to sing_ , he thought, and thought of the smell of warm beer and of little flags on strings and a tinkling old upright piano, and he could smell and see and hear it but couldn’t— _hold_ it.

Maybe best to get on another boat.

 

The next boat was smaller and his hunger ate him alive; he forgot how bad it could get. It felt like a swarm of some strange thrumming animal devouring him from the belly out, and he was empty and lost. He missed his rat friend. He missed—he missed—

 _Mommy, I’m so hungry_ , he remembered.

 _I know, sweetheart_ , said the woman inside his head with the two stringy skinny babies draped across her lap, one latched weakly to her breast, the other yawning and wriggling lazily. _Just give mama a moment._

She looked so tired, the woman inside his head. He felt sorry, bothering her while the stringy skinny babies wormed around her lap. Baby—Becca?—Becca-baby came and pulled his hand. He said to the lady, _Sorry, mommy. I’ll put the water on. Come on Becca. We’ll do it together for mommy._

His chest hurt, not from the hunger but from roaring, gnawing, awful—emptiness. _Mom. Becca. Mom, I miss you_.

 

The rat came back, but it had to be a new rat because he had changed ships. He said, “Hey, little guy.” The rat sniffed his fingers. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any.” The rat chewed his thumb a bit. He said, “Okay, little guy.”

 

 _Bucky, read m-me_ Treasure Island _again_ , said the little boy with a big nose and thatch-roof yellow hair in his head, floating in suspenders on a staircase that was nowhere. _Yeah, Bucky! Please,_ chorused the little girl who plumed into being beside him, and she had buckteeth and brown hair in messy little braids. _Please, we’ll hold real still_.

 _Okay, okay_ , he said from inside his own head, because he knew that the little boy with the big nose and only one front tooth can’t read yet, hasn’t been reading as good. _You follow along, okay?_ This was what the boys call him a teacher’s pet for, but he wanted Steve to love school the way he did. Soon he and Steve would not be allowed to sit next to each other, but for now they still can. They got into trouble for giggling, but also Bucky helped Steve follow the letters along. Steve said every time that it made his head hurt.

 _How a-a-about I j-j-jus’ draw?_ the little boy asked.

 _Okay_ , he said inside his head.

 

The rat sniffed his head, his face, nibbled at the—whiskers, slow beard, on his face. His hair grew slow; he knew this. Couldn’t remember from where.

“I know, little guy,” he said.

 

The boat stopped and the sign said “Rotterdam.” The solider tucked his rat friend into his pocket as he slipped away.

 

He followed the coastline. He found _food_. God, GOD, food. Food.

 _Steve, come over to my place for supper, bring your mom_ , he said inside his head to the yellow headed boy.

 _Nah, thanks_. The yellow-headed boy, he somehow knew, hated charity.

 _Papa won $11 this weekend, Steve, we’re eatin’ like kings! Come ooooooon, Steve. Mom said you can come_.

He found a bag of limp carrots and shared them with Little Guy. Little Guy had grey-brown fur, not yellow, but the soldier said, “You can call me Bucky.” He knew rats didn’t really talk, but he said it anyways.

Little Guy ate the wet limp carrot leaf from the bag and sniffed the soldier’s hand. The soldier ran his not-metal fingertip over Little Guy’s head. He said, “We’re eatin’ like kings.”

Little Guy nibbled his finger a little more insistently.

He nodded knowingly. He would find them more kingly food sometime. He kept walking and Little Guy dozed in his pocket.

 

He was grubby, and he smelled rotten and moldy and terrible. He made his way down the scraggy coastline to the water, and sat in it. It felt good, and so he laid down with his head in the wet sand and let the tiny waves wrap around his head. It felt good. He held Little Guy out of the water with his metal arm the whole time.

 

He walked, ate, slept occasionally. He never made Little Guy stay but he stayed in his pocket anyways. “You can call me Bucky,” he told Little Guy again.

 

 _Let’s go see it again_ , said the thatch-roof boy in his head, who was bigger now, not a child; he was still yellow-headed and stick-thin, but with all his teeth and having grown a shade more into his nose. Only a shade. Even inside his head, floating inside a staircase that was nowhere, he knew he loved that nose.

 _Four times in enough, little guy,_ he countered inside his head, and the yellow boy scowled at “little guy” but didn’t protest. It was their name between them.

 _I can get us in free_ , protested yellow boy, Steve, _we can sit in the projection box, c’mon_.

_Didn’t you nearly get your scrawny ass fired for that last time?_

_Aw, c’mon. Mr. K won’t fire me._

And he wouldn’t, he knew, fire Steve—he’d kept the kid on after his mother died and even though he nearly killed himself lugging reels up to the box with his stick-skinny arms, even though he sometimes got coughing fits during the movies up in the box and interrupted everyone’s movie. Steve worked incredibly hard and incredibly cheap, for his 25 cents an hour even. And he drew the posters for free, and they were much nicer than the ones the studios sent. The one he drew for _The Wizard of Oz_ , after his first viewing, was a thing of genuine beauty; it was an explosion of light and color for an artist so terminally colorblind he’d gone to his own mother’s funeral in a tie the color of an overripe tomato.

 _Come see the movie with me,_ Steve said.

Bucky—that was the soldier’s name, inside his head, when he was in the staircases and streets and apartments inside of his head that are nowhere else—said, _But I was gonna maybe meet up with Dolores_.

 _Aw, come awwwn_ , Steve said, a funny beautiful twinky crooked smile on his face, and even just inside his head the soldier-Bucky just wants to hold him close and kiss his silly face until he squirms away. This not something that happened on the staircase inside his head that’s nowhere, though, it is just something he wants.

 _Come watch the movie with me, it’s really good_ , Steve said. _We’ll sit in the projection box. I’ll get beer._

This is so perfectly tempting that outside of his head the soldier will wonder if it could have possibly really happened anywhere.

 

Under a sign called “Waalwijk” he thought he saw somebody watching him too close, and that night on the beach the bodies poured sand into his mouth and eyes and ripped off his fingernails one by one. He decided to stop following the coast, and moved through trees instead. Eventually, he found railroad tracks. That felt right, like the right direction, but the first time he clambered into one of the trains he woke up from a vision of snow and red in it, and he was shaking so hard he couldn’t even hold Little Guy up to his face to feel his fur.

 

The way the train rocked him made him lose so much time, and it made everything rattle inside his head, words but also sensations, detaching themselves like earth disturbed by a mine. Hands and squirming and things that hurt, but also just. Warmth, and a full belly, smells he could almost smell but couldn’t. The yellow haired boy named Steve, who floated inside his head, saying, _No, stop it, Buck_ , and Bucky—which was the soldier, when he was floating in apartments inside his head—saying, _C’mon, I’ll show you, take my hands_.

Eventually, the boy inside his head took his hands, and Bucky’s hands were so much bigger but Steve’s were spindly and long and strong, and they interlaced, they went through the steps of the dance, which were still inside the apartment in his head even if the music was gone and was just ringing empty quiet instead, and they danced, and first it was slow and terrible and strange and their bodies were stiff with the worry they were doing something wrong, but then the music picked up, somehow he knew it, and he twirled Steve under his arm, and Steve laughed, that tinkling toothy perfect laugh, and they were moving like fast and fluid and laughing, and the soldier wished so much he could close the space between them and pepper that funny blotchy face in kisses and twine their bodies into a rope.

 

He changed trains when he could, to make sure he wasn’t easy to follow, to make sure he was alone. The longer he spent away from his handlers the more he didn’t want to go back.

 _You’re a stupid, disloyal child_ , someone sneered into his face, digging fingers into his jawbone, bend low and he was strapped to a table, a knife at his throat, or maybe the knife was from a different time. _I should gut you right here. You don’t want. You don’t need. You serve. You’re a dog. Stupid, ugly dog. You ought to lick my boots in gratitude. You ought to suck my cock every day for the rest of your pitiful life. Why would you do this to me? Why don’t you care what I’m trying build? Why aren’t you grateful? Ugly stupid boy. Be a good boy._

It didn’t matter that it hadn’t all happened at the same time, because it had all happened. And it swarmed around him every night.

 

But still, he didn’t want to go back.

 

He changed trains again. He remembered to eat more regularly, because if Little Guy didn’t get his food he got grumpy and nibbled his fingers. He needed a plan; didn’t need a plan to know it was easier to find food where people were, and easier to hide in plain sight. He found himself daydreaming, about a door with a key and a lock he could lock so nobody could come inside. He wondered if they let people who weren’t really people have such things.

 

They’d taught him languages by locking him in rooms with looping videos and tests that cost him fingernails if he didn’t pass, or else they’d put out the cigarettes his tongue. Or cut—

It didn’t matter, now, he thought. He learned them fast, and could read in twelve languages, he was pretty sure; speak in a good seven more. He often found this out just by reading.

By reading, he learned he was in Romania, and by reading, he found he was close to Bucharest.

“I don’t know why I know how to read that,” he said, holding Little Guy up to sniff the sign, which Little Guy obligingly did. “But it says thirty kilometers to Bucharest. Little Guy is, uh. Om mic? I don’t know. I don’t know why I know it. So I don’t know if it’s right.”

Little Guy, lowered from the sign, sniffed the underside of his chin in a friendly way. He could appreciate that this was a lot for a rat, and anyways, it was plenty talking for now. Only thirty kilometers to Bucharest.

 

When he got there, he found a dumpster and was overjoyed to find it just as full of treats as the dumpsters back from before. He slept nearby them, and no bodies came, which was pretty good.

 

 _We looked for you after_ , he was saying inside of his head, where he was walking up more stairs to nowhere and where he was named Bucky, and where laundry was dangling everywhere. _My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery_ , he added, and knew that Mom and Dad were willing to spring for a cab for Steve, had maybe even saved for it, or else Dad had just had the luck to win enough for the fare this week and felt generous. Either way, they were going to. Mom had said it was only right.

 _I know, I’m sorry_ , the yellow haired boy said, and his voice was a little scratchy in a way that meant he’d been crying. Oh, Steve. He hadn’t cried in front of anybody in years and years. _I just...kinda wanted to be alone_.

Absent a Steve to ferry to the burial, Bucky and his mother and father, with Becca and Ruthie and Lil, had lingered awkwardly in the front of Our Mother of Mercy, the five of them making up a full fifth of the attendants of poor Sarah Rogers’s funeral. He was wearing his best clothes; he looked much better than Steve, in fact, because the tailor he worked for had a suit fitted for him. Steve looked rumpled and pitiful, in a light shirt and a red tie that made Bucky wince and wish he’d stopped in to dress the poor kid before he left.

 _How was it?_ he asked, with nothing else to ask. It was a dumbass question. How was it? Steve was seventeen and had just buried his second parent; he was seventeen and five-foot-four and barely weighed enough to survive a strong breeze. He was sick, and lonely, and now his ma was gone. The service had been awful, and pitiful, and stiff and wooden and miserable. Steve’s eulogy had been less than five minutes and riddled, Bucky knew, with misspellings.

 _It was okay_ , said Steve. _She’s next to Dad_. Who’d been dead since Steve was a kid. On the other side of dad, Bucky knew, was Steve’s baby brother, Paul, who’d died awhile after he was born. They were really little, but Bucky remembered because Mom told him to say an extra prayer for Steve and Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. When Steve was five and Bucky was six, Steve’s father had died in the middle of the night, of some kind of respiratory infection he’d picked up half a decade earlier when he was in the war. Mrs. Rogers had been working a night shift, and it was Steve, then still small enough that he was sleeping in a drawer his mother had lined with quilts, who’d found his father’s body in the bed the following morning.

Bucky didn’t remember the details too well, because he’d only been six, but Steve’s dad had debts and Steve’s family was poor, and in the ensuing stress at some point Steve had been left for about a week and a half with the Barneses to look after him. He was peeing the bed, though; not just a little, and not just once, but every night, sometimes twice. Being that the Barneses had only one bed between them—Becca was still in a drawer herself, and the family wouldn’t acquire the luxury of a second bed until after the twins were born some years later—Steve peeing on himself was also peeing on Bucky and his mom and dad. So they’d pushed the couch cushions together and balanced them between chairs (rat insurance), and Bucky had nobly joined Steve in this makeshift bed. As a best friend ought to.

They were nearing Steve’s apartment—Sarah’s apartment, really. But now Steve’s. Christ, he couldn’t pay the rent on this place; not even close.

 _I was gonna say_ —

 _I know what you’re gonna say, Buck, I just_ —

Steve was being stubborn. He was being stupid. He was being very Steve about it all.

 _We can put the couch cushions together, like when we were kids_ , Bucky said, so Steve couldn’t say all his I Justs, all his reasons why he couldn’t possibly just let Bucky help. Bucky was on the verge of moving out, anyways; he’d been saving up and he was too big to be eating out of his mom’s hand.  He wanted Steve to come to the new place; it would be fun. Steve would be there all the time; they’d make it together. The kid could stop being quite so queer about some stuff and they’d find their way. _It’ll be fun. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash._

Steve couldn’t find his house key; Bucky wearily kicked aside the brick where Steve had hidden him a spare nearly ten years ago. As he did, he spotted the shine on his own shoes, and the grubby muddy mess that was Steve’s left boot. Shit. What an asshole he was. Bucky was poor, he was a dirt-poor little son of a gambling longshoreman and a Pennsylvania Dutch coal miner’s daughter; he’d never held more than eight dollars at once and probably never would. He grew up in a three-room tenement and beat rats back from his sisters’ toes at night; he was a poor little fucker. But he wasn’t poor like Steve, and he wasn’t alone like Steve. He’d never rooted through a garbage can at school for something to eat, and while his future wasn’t exactly bright, he did expect to make it to twenty. Steve had been told this was unlikely for him since he was about three.

What a perfect cunt he was. Shit. Shit

 _Thank you, Buck_ , said Steve, wearily, taking the key. _But I can get by on my own._

Bucky’s chest was pounding; he needed to do several things at once, here. He needed to do some damage repair; he needed to dispel the sense of a rapidly diminishing opportunity.

 _Yeah_. _The thing is_.

The thing is, you’re going to kill your idiot ass.

The thing is, maybe if you just hold still a second I’ll figure out what it is I’m trying to say to you, and you’ll say the same thing back, and then we can be speaking the same language, here, little guy.

The thing is, come get by with me.

_You don’t have to._

He reached forward and gripped Steve’s shoulder, tried to close the space. Tried to think how to say the right thing.

When they were little kids and played train robbers and cowboys, what did they used to say immediately before or after calling a truce in the toy gun and stick related smacking?

 _I’m with you till the end of the line, pal_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  Kak vas zovut? - "What's your name?"  
> Bez imeni. - "No name."  
> Pomogi mne. - "Help me."  
> Om mic - little man


	13. Chapter Twelve: The Piano Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over text not in English for translations. Notes and translations at the end.

It had been, he thought, about a week since he’d arrived in Bucharest when he found the piano room.

He’d been sleeping anywhere he could, moving when he suspected people, or bodies, were near, staying mostly out of sight. It was getting very cold, and the cold made him numb and floating and forgetful, so he was looking to stay inside longer before first snow arrived. That’s when he found it.

A long way from people, just the way he liked it, was a block of long, thin grey buildings that he could tell nobody had been inside in a long time; they looked like ghosts. He knew how they felt.

Inside, it was like the ground they’d built the buildings on was winning it back, slowly. The black and white floor was carpeted in dust and dirt; there were sprouts and puddles among the tiles and the steps of the grand, winding staircase. Under the staircase, there was a—

A _piano_.

He hadn’t seen a piano in a long time; not as long as it had been since he’d seen some things—pianos didn’t _only_ exist inside his head in floating places, the way the skinny boy named Steve and the twin girls named Ruthie and Lillian did, or the way the taste of warm rolls from the oven did, but. It had been a very long time. But he knew what it was. He could touch it, he could understand it. It made music, when you pressed.

His heart was pounding as he reached one hand towards the grey-brown keys, high in his throat, nearly choking him. He wanted to try to press the winking teeth but feared the room might cave in if he tried. It all seemed to hang in the air like the dust, threatening to collapse into nothingness the moment he breathed. Like most memories.

He swallowed, hard, it almost hurt, but he reached his hand—his weaker hand, the one with real skin, out to a key, and pressed hard, once, with one finger.

The noise followed, discordant, duller than he was expecting, blunted, but he heard it, and it rung through the massive, dusty hallway. Oh.

The sound did not shake the dust loose from the ceiling, nor shake the beams loose and send them crashing to the ground, as he’d imagined it might. It didn’t do anything but ring through the silence and die. He looked around. He called out, hoarsely, “Hello?”

Nothing called back. He set up the stairs, going slow, wary that they might not be well-constructed, but the grandeur of the front hall petered into a simple, utilitarian set of red-painted steps and orange-painted wall.

He walked up three flights of steps before he saw a door that was open already. He walked through it, and saw a little room with a mattress and a counter and a stove and a refrigerator, and windows. A big radiator. It was nice.

He left and walked around some more. And then he came back to the room with the open door.

“Do you think it’s for me?” he asked Little Guy, who was wiggling around in his jacket pocket. Very few things had been for him. Usually guns, or boots or jackets. IVs and needles. The arm. The chair. The ice.

He swallowed. Maybe this was for him, too. There was nobody there to say it wasn’t.

 

After he’d sat in the apartment for three days, he decided to go out and find some food. Little Guy was hungry, it seemed, always nibbling his fingers and his wiry beard. He wanted to shave it, too. He knew his facial hair grew very slowly, and figured it was because of how he was Enhanced.

_Your face is as smooth as a fuckin’ baby’s bottom_ , somebody told Steve-in-his-head, who was bigger now and wearing a leather jacket and a helmet and driving the Jeep, with a cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth permanently, to stave off the hunger and to keep them all awake, and he knew that Steve’s face was that smooth because his serum made the hair on his face grow much slower.

But by now, the soldier had a proper beard, and he wanted it gone. It itched.

So he set out of the apartment, _his_ apartment, with his hat low over his head and Little Guy in his jacket pocket, where he could nibble happily at his cuticles.

He walked for awhile, and found some food in a dumpster that was just okay. He snuck into a little store that had the things needed for shaving and waited there until everybody was gone. He didn’t want to take things but he couldn’t talk to real people or they’d know he wasn’t one of them, and lock him away again.

He knew what he needed to shave: razor, cream. He remembered a hand on his jaw, somebody shaving his face and chuckling that if he so much as moved an inch he’d lose his nose. _Don’t need your nose to shoot people, eh doggie?_ A thumb in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, and then he went to the apartment inside his head.

_Don’t go against the grain, Buck,_ said a man, tall and serious with flecks of gray in his hair, and just as he knew the yellow boy was Steve and he, in here, was Bucky, and the three chestnut-haired girls were Becca and Ruthie and Lil, and the woman with the big brown eyes and the voice like honey was Mom, he knew this was “Dad.”

_I don’t know what that means_ , he told Dad, in his head, looking at a gray speckled mirror and his own spotty face, wishing it were prettier or less pretty or something, whatever that meant. Not words for boys. The point was, he had to get the little patches of brown mousy hair off his cheeks. Those were not nice no matter what level of pretty he wanted.

_It means go the same direction as the hair_ , Dad said, and demonstrated with his own razor against his cheek, and Bucky copied the motion, thoughtful and deliberate, and immediately found it easier and less uncomfortable.

_Don’t go too fast,_ Dad said, _all you’ll do is nick yourself._

_I’m not going too fast_ , Bucky replied, and in that same moment opened a tiny cut on his jaw. _Ow!_

Dad laughed and blotted it with a piece of toilet tissue, gentle, simple, careful. Bucky hoped he was growing into the sort of man his dad was, the sort of man who did things right the first time and held things with both hands. He thought he probably wouldn’t, there was something so— _creased_ about him already. But he wanted to try.

So, he mirrored Dad. And soon, he looked fairly upright, grownup, maybe even respectable. He ran his tongue over his teeth and smiled in the mirror.

_Not bad_ , Dad said.

Soon, the shop was empty, and he and Little Guy were free to wander around a bit, take stock. In the end, he took a small treasure trove of things: pens, a _toothbrush_ with _toothpaste_ (his mouth tingled happily at the mere idea), the razor and shaving cream, gloves, toilet paper, chocolate, potato chips, a comb, _cigarettes_ (his body thrummed with excitement just holding the package), matches, milk, pretzels, potato chips, oats in a canister, and a black backpack to hold them all. At the door, he grabbed a red notebook. He wanted it.

 

_я купил это. это мое. английский: it’s mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine. mine._

Little Guy nibbled the pages of the notebook and played in the toilet tissue. He felt like a good friend. He liked to write in the notebook even if it felt sort of unnatural.

 

_имя имя имя имя имя имя имя имя. i don’t have one!_

_i just REMEMBERED about the “!” sign. i like it._

 

Sometimes, he went and sat on the steps of a church near the (his) apartment. Churches, he remembered, were supposed to let anybody in.

_That’s why I like them_ , said Steve-in-his-head.

_What about Jewish people?_ he asked in his head, where he did have a name, which was Bucky.

_What about them?_ asked Steve, who was bent low over some paper, drawing with his brow furrowed. So sweet.

_Are they allowed in?_

_Uh, I think they have their own churches_ , Steve said thoughtfully, tongue between his teeth. _But they let anybody in. They’d even let—I don’t know, an Arab or something in. They’re supposed to, anyways._

The soldier wasn’t anything, but he hoped the rule still applied, so he sat on the steps sometimes and one cold morning, they let him inside. He sat inside for a long time, and listened to the prayers. He didn’t answer when they asked his name.

A few days later, he sat on the steps again, and a little lady who introduced herself as Silvia handed him a squishy bundle. He stared at it.

“That’s for you,” she told him, in Romanian.

_Mine?_

He tried to remember how to say “thank you,” mulțumesc, but he couldn’t make the actual words come from his mouth. His throat was closed up concrete.

“Don’t worry about it, dragă,” she said, and patted his gloved hand, and then she was gone.

He took the big squishy package home, and when he unfolded it he realized it was like a bedroll, but even softer. He put it on his mattress and slept so warm and soft that night no bodies found him at all.

 

_have to say THANK YOU (mul-tu-mes) to silvia for the Special blanket because inside ~~the bodies~~ No One can even see me & it is very WARM_

 

He went back to say thank-you-mulțumesc to Silvia, and his throat was stuck for a long time trying to make the word come out, gulping like a fish.

Before he could say it, Little Guy wriggled out of his jacket sleeve. He had to catch him with his hands and hold the rat to his chest.

“Oh, my god!” gasped Silvia.

But he swallowed and said, “It’s my friend.”

He liked the word _friend_ , even in Romanian, when it wasn’t _friend_ at all but _amic_ , but it meant the same thing.  

“The rat is your friend?” Silvia asked. The soldier bobbed his head to mean _yes_ , and prepared to run away if Silvia tried to take Little Guy away.

But she didn’t. Instead, she asked if he wanted a job.

_amic is Friend. i have never had one before except in the apartment in my head. out here only littleguy, & maybe silvia, & maybe steve rogers but i don’t know where steve rogers is. steve rogers thinks BUCKY BARNES is me, but bucky barnes was a howlingcommando, which means a SOLDIER in the UNITED STATES ARMY, & i am_____________________________

 

 

A job, it turned out, was not like a mission, but not _not_ like a mission. The mission for Silvia was to clean up the pews in the church and to change out the candles and to pull the leaves out of the gutter. Nobody was going to get killed and he didn’t get to pretend to be a person like in the Congo or when he was pretending in Washington, D.C., but he also didn’t have to be a weapon either because nobody was getting killed and there was no extracting information, just leaves from storm drains. She paid him for it every day after he did it and he could use the money to get anything he wanted. He thought at first the money was hers really, for a mission, like when they gave him dollars and d-marcs and rubles and đồng and pesos, and he frowned.

“What. Do I buy?” he’d asked, looking at his hands, with the leu crumpled there, because looking into her face made his face hot and his throat even more sluggish.

“Anything you want,” she’d said. “It’s yours.”

She told him this every time she paid him, until the tenth time, when he asked, “Mine?” while she handed it to him, and then she just said _da_.

 

_i bought more Chocolate for me & more tissues because littleguy likes to play in them & then i walked out to the LIBRARY & i found 4 books about CAPTAIN AMERICA & i read 2 of them & will go back & read the other 2 but had to leave because the Bodies were in the library & i heard them & got cold_

 

He liked to spend his money, _his_ money, on chocolate and fruits, sparklingly sweet and fresh and _all his_ , except he also shared the fruit and berries with Little Guy.

“You can call me Bucky,” he told Little Guy, lots of times, and then remembered that rats couldn’t talk. “I’m not very smart,” he amended himself, but figured at this point Little Guy was used to that. It was nice of him to be his friend anyways. “We’re friends, right?” he asked Little Guy.

Little Guy squeaked and bit his finger. “Okay,” he said, and went for a wander around the building, because he wanted to move his restless legs but didn’t want anybody to see his face because right now the idea of that was very frightening. So he walked up and down the stairs, and leaned on the doors that looked like they might open. Most didn’t. The ones that did usually looked a lot like his place.

Then he found one, two stories down from his place, that had a big brown squashy chair right in the middle.

He stared at it.

He didn’t much like chairs, because the word _chair_ ( _stul_ , _Stuhl_ ) brought to mind just one specific chair, a chair he hated, because it was big and black and had the halo that hugged around his head and—

Hurt and hurt and hurt. He blinked his eyes hard, and looked at the chair here. This one couldn’t hurt him. It looked squishy and comfortable. It looked like something that would be nice to sit in. Just to have. And to just sit in, and have. And that being allowed.

“Is that allowed?” he asked, then he remembered Little Guy was downstairs, playing in the toilet paper rolls he’d strung together for his friend to run around in. “Is it allowed?” he asked again, anyways, and then he said, “Yes.”

_Who allows it? Me!_

He giggled at the thought, and walked in, and sat down on the chair. A plume of thick dust rose out of it around him, and he sank in cozily. It was the most comfortable thing he could remember feeling, since the giant soft bed in the apartment inside his head, the one he burrowed into with Becca and the twins every night, didn’t feel like anything. Most of the things that were only inside his head didn’t feel like anything.

“This chair is mine now,” he said, again to nobody, and wondered why it was easier to talk to nobody than to Silvia or anybody else. But he was getting a little better. The day before, he had told her “good” when she asked how his morning was, and she probably even thought he was a real person.

He hauled the chair up the two stories on the spindly red stairs, and put it in the middle of the apartment, _his_ apartment, and then picked Little Guy up out of the scraps of cardboard he was playing in and sat in the chair with him.

“This chair is better,” he said. “Even if I can’t learn anything from it.”

Little Guy squeaked in approval.

 

_i like to take the money Silvia gives to me for cleaning up & go to the stands where the Ladies sell fruits & berries & stuff because that is the food that tastes the best _

_i do not think i have ever tasted fruit so nice_

_once i shot that boy so i could have an orange_

_even in russia i don’t think there was a lot of fresh fruit to eat but this one was perfect & i even ate the skin_

_why did you do that why did the boy have to die why did you say yes you didn’t have to why would you do something like that just to be good you’re not good you’re bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad_

_the museum said sergeant barnes was The Only howlingcommando to give his LIFE in SERVICE of his COUNTRY & they said that happened in 1945 _

_but steve rogers from the museum captain america said you name is james buchanan barnes which means he said i was sergeant barnes why don’t i remember if i am BUCKY BARNES why don’t i remember being a howlingcommando _

_maybe i do remember but don’t Remember that it’s really a Memory_

_usually Memory or Dream means it’s LONG PAST TIME TO WIPE HIM!!_

_i remember being a SOLDIER but not a howlingcommando i wasn’t that kind of SOLDIER i was the FIST OF HYDRA hail hydra_

_your Work has been a GIFT to ManKind_

_the lady who i was holding down because mission BIT my hand & i HIT her face 2ce & then she DID NOT move anymore because i had to (mission) _

_on the COMPUTER at the Library i read that SHIELD SECRETARY ALEXANDER PIERCE is Dead & that is the DIRECTOR_

_the DIRECTOR is DEAD!!! he has been for a Long Time!! i had a malfunction & i cried but now i am eating chocolate with my FRIEND Littleguy & i think it isn’t so bad MAYBE. i don’t think if i DIED the DIRECTOR would cry. but i don’t think i can DIE.  _

_i THINK it is Almost the new Year & the Year will be 2015 (TWO THOUSAND FIFTEEN)_

_i remember one time they said What Year Is It & i said it was 1945 (NINETEEN FORTY FIVE) & they laughed & laughed & laughed & laughed & laughed & laughed & laughed _

_i am very good at hiding so i could do bad bad things to people without Anybody knowing i was THERE _

_& so that is why the DIRECTOR said_

_You Are Like The Force Of History_

_if i am james buchanan bucky barnes i am history Already & should be dead now_

_somebody said i’m really GOOD at shooting people who are Moving & from far away, i think i wasam because i did it & i remember Shooting people i counted as many as i remembered & it was TOO MANY & the Numbers turned to Water inside My head like when ice melts but so many people with the smell of them & this is probably why their bodies come to rip me up_

_sorry sorry sorry_

_i went to the Library today & read a lot about STEVE ROGERS & i feel now like i am reading a Book about Myself like My notebook & i malfunctioned threw up in the library & they made me leave i HOPE they won’t Wipe me_

_they cut me up_

_i bought 3 apples today & ate them down to the cores & ate the stems & the seeds just because NOBODY says i am not Allowed, & because i Dreamed i was under a table & i said i’m so hungry & they kicked me so many times & i have to eat with a tube (the hole for the tube is still INSIDE me) & it was lots of Different times but it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep it all in a straight line but NOBODY took the apples from Me_

_I dreamed about Steve & I loved him_

_i think if steve were here i would say_

_the same as i say to little guy i would say You Can Call Me Bucky_

_steve Rogers is supposed to STAND for people who are GOOD but i am NOT GOOD i killed people & am_

_belong to_

_killed people for HYDRA hail hydra so i don’t know why he would want to be my Friend it was PROBABLY a BIG MISTAKE_

_i think maybe JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES’s sisters REBECCA WARNER (NÉE BARNES) & RUTH BARNES-YOUNG & LILLIAN CRUZ (NÉE BARNES) might be the same as BECCA & RUTHY & LIL in the apartment Inside my Head & i wish i had a Telephone that could call them but wikipedia.com says:_

_REBECCA WARNER (NÉE BARNES) february 23 1919 - august 3 2009_

_RUTH BARNES-YOUNG march 28 1924 – october 11 2012_

_LILLIAN CRUZ (NÉE BARNES) march 28 1924 – january 30 2010_

_which means they are Gone also_

_GEORGE BARNES september 8 1892 – july 19 1965_

_WINIFRED BARNES (NÉE WELD) november 14 1895 – may 11 1985_

_also_

_JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES march 10 1917 – january 19 1945_

_so everybody’s gone_

_i dreamed this_

_i am Teaching Steve Rogers how to shave his FACE, because his Father is DEAD & his face is an UGLY PATCHY MESS & i say Alright Enough & show him & we do it together in the apartment inside My head & when we are done & his face no longer has patches that look like DEAD RODENT HAIR all OVER HIM i hold up My left Hand which has SKIN (only inside my head) & i Kiss the forefinger & i put it on Steve Rogers’s cheekbone_

_Why Did You Do That! he says_

_I Don’t Know! i say_

_it is O.K. to not know, when i am in the apartment inside My head, & because Steve Rogers is my Best Friend and we can NOT KNOW TOGETHER _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >Read about the abandoned housing of the Eastern Bloc [here.](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34575019)
> 
> **Translations**  
>  я купил это. это мое. английский: - "I bought it. It's mine. English:"  
> имя - name  
> mulțumesc - Thank you  
> dragă - sweetheart


	14. Chapter Thirteen: The Bombing in Vienna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for animal death.

 Little Guy died in the beginning of May two years after he ran away from the riverbank.

 

He woke up, and took a shower in the little bathroom, and was washing his face and thinking about the dream he had, where he fell through cold air for a long time. This seemed, like so many things, to ultimately confirm the Working Theory, which was that he was Bucky Barnes, the same one who was a Howling Commando and who had Followed Captain America Into the Jaws of Death, and that Captain America was the same as Steve, the skinny little boy who he boxed and wrestled with in his memories, and huddled close to for warmth, and laughed with until his belly hurt.

He didn’t know what to do about being Bucky Barnes, precisely, besides hide. Bucky Barnes, after all, was dead, or so everybody thought but the people who knew better, which was just him, and maybe Steve Rogers, and anybody Steve Rogers had told about it. But most people thought Bucky Barnes was dead, and while the Winter Soldier wasn’t as famous as Bucky Barnes, the people who the soldier had killed—who Bucky had killed, _who I killed_ —knew.

But they were dead. But some people who weren’t dead knew, too. Anyways, not-hiding meant becoming the soldier again, and he didn’t want to do that anymore.

He came out of the shower and dressed (he had his own clothes now, and he chose what order to wear them in, and when; he had ten pairs of underwear, six pairs of socks, two pairs of jeans, one pair of sweatpants, four shirts, one hoodie, one hat, and one jacket), and then he went to give Little Guy his breakfast, which was always a little fruit and some bread, the same as he ate. They were friends together.

He went to the box Little Guy slept in, the one he’d lined with a soft fleece he bought with his church-cleaning money, and that had cardboard and oats and other things Little Guy liked. Little Guy was asleep in his box; he usually was wriggling around by the time he heard his breakfast coming. He did not respond to being poked.

“Wake up,” he told his friend. “Breakfast.”

Little Guy kept sleeping.

“Little Guy,” he said, turning the rat over with his skin-hand, “wake up.”

Little Guy kept sleeping.

Oh.

He’d been around lots of dead things before. It wasn’t unusual at all. Animals, of course, and people; lots of people. He’d killed so many people, and they locked him in rooms with bodies, and he’d been next to so many bodies. It wasn’t anything new. It was a rat, who died. Thinking on it, he’d been carrying Little Guy around for two years. Rats probably didn’t live very long.

But his chest was tight and his face was warm and his breathing was coming fast and squished together, and Little Guy’s brown little body in his hand and his sweet little long pointy face just frozen in a silly sleeping face, like he was about to sneeze with his mouth open a bit and his tiny teeth showing, he felt sobs hacking out of him, he felt the room getting smaller, he felt himself shaking and his face scrunching up and turning red.

“Oh no,” he said, and then again, “oh, no. Oh no. Oh, no. Little Guy, oh no.”

He didn’t know why he was saying it. He didn’t even know what he was saying. He sat down on his bed and then lay down and held Little Guy close to his chin the way he had so many times before with Little Guy sniffing and nibbling, and he cried and thought a thought he was pretty sure he remembered having before, which was, _I don’t want to be Bucky anymore_.

          

The next thing he really knew, it was dark out, and he set Little Guy back in his box, very gently, and then took a dish towel he’d found in one of the other apartments and lay it over the top of the box, since he’d lost the lid, but he didn’t think his friend’s body should be just laying out like that. Then he sat on his bed and looked at the wall and tried to remember how to think, but couldn’t really.

 

The next day, he went out and found a big book that was pretty much intact in a dumpster, and then he went home and put the box that was Little Guy’s bed into the bigger box, then walked behind his building and dug a deep hole and put the box with Little Guy’s box inside of it in the hole. He wished he had something to mark the spot but he didn’t.

“I love you,” he said, to the new hole. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “Bye.”

 

After he dug the hole and put his friend in it to say goodbye, he walked for a long time, then realized his stomach was panging-empty. He hadn’t eaten any food since he found Little Guy to give him breakfast but didn’t because he was gone, which was a word for dead. He didn’t know quite how long that was, but probably awhile, going by how dizzy he was and the way his belly echoed.

He walked to the fruit stands, the ones with the little old ladies who tended to fill his bags more then he paid for because they thought he was Not Too Bright, but drăguţ, and so they gave him lots.

He went to the lady who was selling plums, and frowned at them thoughtfully, and found his voice only when the lady asked if she could get him anything.

He nodded. He asked if they were good, reached forward and picked one up, realized he’d picked it up with his metal hand. He could think of no good way out of this, though, so he asked for six and paid for them in coins. She said, “Mulțumesc, drăguţă,” and he said, “Mulțumesc, doamnă,” and walked to the curb.

On the curb, he felt eyes on him; they belonged to Mihail, who sold newspapers from a stand and who sometimes let him have one for half price, because he didn’t often ask. He didn’t like papers much.

But he came closer because he saw Mihail’s eyes on him, and he came closer, picked up the paper Mikhail was selling, the static was roaring in his head, he recognized—

**Winter Soldier cautat pentru Bombardmentul din Viena**

Underneath was a picture of him, but—but he wasn’t _in_ Vienna? Was he? He’d know. Right. But—

They could pull things out of his brain, move them around, play with him. They could, but wouldn’t he know? Why would they let him go back to his house?

He looked up. He swallowed. This didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t have been in Vienna; nobody who’d take him there and make him do things he didn’t remember later would let him come back here. And he had his homemade calendar in his notebook, and he could use it to count days. And he missed some, sure, and it was pretty easy to fake, but why would they let him come back? They wouldn’t.

That was a picture of him, but he wasn’t in Vienna. Static. Static.

He swallowed the panic. Time to disappear.

 

When he got home, he could tell someone had been there at once. There were faint but new tracks in the dust and dirt on the checkered floor of the entryway for his building. He skipped the grand staircase, which creaked, and snuck up the back steps. He found his apartment door open. Fear thrilled up and down his body, but he walked on. He knew how to protect himself. He did.

Captain America was in his apartment. Captain America was looking at one of his notebooks; it was hard to resist the urge to claw it back. _That’s mine!_ He waited. He was still as the panic climbed up inside him again, like flames licking a building, fear so pressing and overpowering it was making everything white and empty like—

“Understood,” Captain America said to his earpiece. Then he turned around.

Steve Rogers’s face was the same, as in the pictures from the news but also from the 1940s. Hidden in his cowl, but the same. The same shape. Something in his chest was flipping over and over. The corners of his brain seemed to be straining. If fear really were a fire, the soldier would have been a tower of flame. He was such a coward. His brain was thrumming white and blue and empty, empty.

“Do you know me?” asked Steve Rogers.

“You’re Steve,” he said, his tongue too heavy. That wasn’t enough. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “I read about you in a museum,” he added, trying to hold Steve’s gaze, even though eye contact always made him feel squirmy and hot and stupider.

“I know you’re nervous,” said Steve Rogers, and it was an incredible understatement. His stomach was cramping into a hard, nervous stone, and it hurt; he could feel his fingers shaking on his right side. He wanted to run but couldn’t; there was nowhere to go. Steve continued, “And you have plenty of reason to be,” and the soldier’s throat was closing; were they going to—did they want to—oh, god—

“But you’re lying,” Steve said.

 _I’m not_ , he thought, wildly, _I’m not, it’s not allowed, I’m sorry, I can’t remember—I did read about you, in the museum, I don’t know what’s real but I know I read—_

“I wasn’t in Vienna,” he said, and his voice, to his distant surprise, didn’t tremble. “I don’t do that anymore.” _I wouldn’t even if I could, I don’t want to, I don’t want to_ —

“Well, the people who think you did are coming here now,” said Captain America, and he didn’t say whether he believed the soldier or not. “And they’re not planning on taking you alive.”

_Why would I ever expect them to?_

“That’s smart,” he heard himself replying, felt his nose starting to clog and his face getting hot in the way he usually remembered meant “crying,” not “malfunction,” but he couldn’t do either, right now. “Good strategy.” _No witnesses_.

“This doesn’t have to end in a fight, Buck,” said Captain America, who Socked Old Adolf In the Jaw. The soldier—the decommissioned discarded one, not Captain America—took two steps so he was aligned with the front door, which he’d put Mihail’s newspapers over a long time ago in a fit of panic. He could hear their footsteps like Steve could, had been able to awhile. His ears were very good, like Steve Rogers, because they were both enhanced. He started to pull off his glove.

“It always ends in a fight,” he said, because that was all that had ever been true.

“You pulled me from the river,” Steve Rogers said, his own voice taking on that edge that meant tears, and some very faraway corner of the soldier’s brain conjured a little boy in suspenders with a bloody nose, heaving great labored breaths and furiously kicking rocks up the street as he cried into his red fists. “Why?”

The glove came off. No hiding it, now. “I don’t know,” he said, because the river was just another wave of dirty, cold water sloshing in his head. Anything could come out of there.

“Yes you do,” said Steve Rogers, sounding more sure of anything than the soldier had ever been in his life.

And then a grenade flew into the room, and he kicked it and Steve Rogers covered it with that damn shield, and then he couldn’t really remember, later, what happened, because it was just _get away get away_ , he got his bag, the special one he hid, and he got _out_. He knew, later, that he’d talked to Steve, that he’d jumped out of the building, even that the man they called Black Panther, who seemed more like a waking nightmare to Bucky just then, had come and had tried to fight him, but he couldn’t remember anything but a blur of run and run and run and run and run. Get away. Get away, no matter what.

But he didn’t. And one thing he knew was that when your goose is well and truly cooked, it’s best to just go quietly. Fighting, he’d learned, only made it worse later.

 

They put him in a car, then on a plane, and he was held down tightly the entire time. He wished he hadn’t lost his backpack. It had his notebooks, the most important ones he’d written in at the very beginning, and most of his church money, and Silvia’s phone number For Emergencies, and a big bottle of water for him and a small one for Little Guy. He wished he was with his backpack and Little Guy, but the longer he thought about it, the more that felt like an empty stupid thing to wish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  Mulțumesc, drăguţă - "Thank you, sweetheart."  
> Mulțumesc, doamnă - "Thank you, ma'am."


	15. Chapter Fourteen: The Civil War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam's the best.
> 
> Hover over text not in English for translations; they are also included in the end notes.

He was in a square cage with glass sides, and his arms and legs were strapped down hard. He got a tiny shock if he moved, so he didn’t move. His brain seemed half-asleep, his thoughts sluggish and painful. His only coherent thought was that he didn’t want this. And to be good. So it hurt less. He wondered if they were selling him. Sometimes, before, he was rented out to other people to do Wetwork. But Steve Rogers was here, and Steve Rogers didn’t do things like that, to people. But. He wasn’t people. Or.

“Hello, Mr. Barnes,” said the man in front of him, and he wearily dragged his attention back to the man. It was hard. His head felt too heavy. Did they give him drugs on the way here? He used to need lots of medicine. “I’ve been sent by the United Nations to evaluate you.” _Evaluate_ was not a word that inspired confidence. His head was so heavy, and his neck tilted back so he was looking at a bit of the ceiling through the glass and metal. “Do you mind if I sit? Your first name is James?”

James, James. James, what a funny ghost sound, James and Barnes were two names that felt familiar, the way a smell might be familiar, but too far away right now, and his throat felt closed up and clogged, like someone had put a tourniquet around his neck and pulled until it was closed and his head had popped right off. That’s what it felt like, right now.

“I’m not here to judge you,” said the man, and he wondered distantly what that meant, or if rolling his neck would make his head pop back on.

“I just want to ask you a few questions.” _He can’t answer your questions, man, his brain’s just out of the blender. He doesn’t know which end is up_.

“Do you know where you are, James?” He had no idea. Was he supposed to? _The less it knows the better, anyways. Don’t want to fill its poor stupid head up too full, right, you dumb little fucker?_ Don’t even nod. Too much blender, head all the way off and rolling away, dumb little puppy.

“I can’t help you,” the man was saying, in a tone that suggested impatience, “if you don’t talk to me, James.”

He rolled his head forward. Pop it back on. Find the man and look at him, or make it look like you are, respect. James?

“My name is Bucky,” he said, and hoped that was right.

There was a moment of quiet; the man was writing on a pad of paper, and he— _Bucky?_ —tried to remember where he was, why he was here. He’d been—it was newspapers? Steve Rogers? His brain was churning, and there was nothing he could pin down long enough to understand. Be good. Be good. _Please, don’t put me in the chair_. But he _needed_ the chair, he wasn’t _performing_ —but  _please_ —don’t put me in the chair. Don’t put Steve Rogers either, please. He’s nice. He’s so nice to me.

“Tell me, Bucky,” said the man, “you’ve seen a great deal, haven’t you?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He had, but he wasn’t any good at making any of it mean anything. Even his old handlers knew not to ask him for what he’d seen, or have him sit sentry, because he got confused, reported everything or nothing at all, slipped in details from decades or hours out of time, made basic mistakes—

The man was waiting to him to say something. His mouth felt full of wet sand. Say _something_. Don’t want to talk. Don’t want to see. Don’t—

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said, and hoped that was right.

“You fear that—if you open your mouth, the horrors might never stop.” It wasn’t a question. He wondered how the man knew about this particular malfunction of his. _Don’t worry, liebling, it’s not your job to think of such things_.

“Don’t worry.” Oh. Don’t worry. “We only have to talk about one.”

One what? One horror? One—

His head was tilted back again, because it was floating away, and then, quite suddenly, the lights were gone. Alarms blared, red lights flashed. He tightened in his seat, which thankfully didn’t shock him again.

“What the hell is this?” he mumbled.

“Why don’t we discuss your home?” the man said, and why would he keep going with the lights off, the alarms screaming? Anyways, he didn’t know what that meant. His little apartment was ruined now—“Not Romania,” he added, “and certainly not Brooklyn.” _Little ____ from Myrtle Avenue?_ “No, I mean your real home.”

What?

“Zhelaniye,” said the man, and no. No no. No fair, don’t. That hurts—

“No,” he heard himself say.

“Rzhavyy.”

Sparks in his brain, pain in his belly, something under his skin, _don’t, please_ —

“Stop—”

His arm was whirring, trying to—follow orders, though whether his or the man with the book’s, it was impossible to know—he had to get _out_ —

“Semnadtsat’.”

“ _Stop_ ,” he said, practically begged, felt his hands beginning to shake hard, no no no, get away—

“Rassvet.”

Pain exploded through his head, down his neck, his spine, like electricity, like a thousand knives, white-hot and worse than he could bear, he felt himself screaming and felt his arm, his strong arm, wrench free—

“Pech’.”

Get out get out get out—

“Devyat’.”

Slamming on the glass, help me help me help me, it hurt so _much_ —

“Dobroserdechnyy.”

Out out out please please please—

“Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu.”

Please please please—

“Odin.”

Please hurts so much hurts so much please—

“Gruzovoy vagon,” said the man, or he must have, because then there wasn’t anything at all.

 

When he woke up, his head hurt. It hurt so much it woke him up, but it still felt like he was about to pass out from it again. He blinked, shook his head— _Christ_ , it hurt, and his body was shaky and rubbery in a way he knew meant—meant—abstinentnyy sindrom, soldat, eto proydet.

He was sitting up. But sagging hard—why was he—oh. His arm, the good one, the only one anyone ever cared about, was locked hard in—in—a vice? Who— _what_ —

God, but his head. It felt like he’d splat it open, like it ought to be an egg splashed across a hot pan, sizzle sizzle—Christ he was _sweaty_ , too hot, abstinentnyy sindrom, soldat.

“Hey, Cap!” somebody yelled, and then the prisoner was stuck on his ass looking up at two men. One of them was vaguely familiar to him—wings?—and the other was—was—

“Steve,” he said, because it was, it was Steve from the apartment inside his head, grown now but that was the serum, that was Dr. Erskine and Captain America, but he remembered, Captain America was Steve under the mask, Steve Rogers who lived above a fish market and who always won at card games and always lost at dice ones, who drew on every scrap of paper he could find and who would make Bucky laugh until his sides split then poked him in the ribs, who begged him to read _Treasure Island_ , who snuck them beer and who drew little comics of Bucky on napkins and newspapers and hid them in his pockets, it was _Steve_.

“Which Bucky am I talking to?” Steve said back, coldly, and for a moment he didn’t understand at all, he was the only one, they had to be the only two guys born before 1920 running around in bodies that looked less than thirty, but—oh. Steve didn’t trust him. Why would he? Why would he?

But he _remembered_ , he did, he’d spent so much time in the apartment inside his head and read so many books and he could picture with perfect clarity’s Steve’s furrowed caterpillar eyebrows while Bucky lit his first ever cigarette, the summer they were thirteen and fourteen, under the pier waiting for Bucky’s dad to get in to see if he won anything, because sometimes he could be persuaded to take the boys out for beers—

But there weren’t words for that feeling of Steve’s small hand on his forearm as he coughed, the smoke pluming into Bucky’s face, and slatted sunshine striping Steve’s lightly freckled nose. He needed words. Words.

“Your mom’s name was Sarah,” he said, and he could picture her too, perfectly, Steve’s clear eyes and sharp chin, her hair pinned back and the tired lines that always seemed laid over her pretty face like a veil, the way she’d call him “mister” when he was in trouble, the way she’d wallop both their scrawny asses when they were small, the way she always made poor tiny Steve try on his father’s old clothes, as if one day he might reach normal adult proportions.

It wasn’t working. They were quiet. They didn’t believe him.

“You used to put newspapers in your shoes,” he added, thinking of Steve tripping over himself, stumbling around in his father’s oversized beat-to-shit work boots, how Steve wore a pair of Bucky’s own shoes for _four years_ with newspaper balls of different sizes, waiting to grow to be a normal size, and he chuckled, laughed, felt the laughter bubbling up like he couldn’t stop it, oh _Steve_ —

“Can’t read that in a museum,” said Steve, and his face did something that sort of looked the way it felt when Bucky’s heart flipped over.

“Just like that, we’re supposed to be cool?” said Sam-with-the-wings, and Bucky winced, because he was not a good person like Steve or Sam, he was pinned down because he’d—he’d done—

“What did I do?”

“Enough,” said Steve, before anybody had said anything, but Bucky wasn’t really listening, because _shit_ , shit shit shit—it was too _easy_ to make him—to let him—

“Oh, God, I knew this would happen,” he groaned, because he did, he hid for so long because he didn’t want to go back, didn’t want them to _find_ him. “Everything Hydra put inside me is still there.” He resisted the automatic, pressing urge to defer, to say what he was supposed to, wriggling in his head like a worm. “All he had to do was say the goddamn words.” They’d explained, a long time ago, that the words made him extra good. _Compliant_ , like to get the fleas out of his brain. He remembered the words and pain like a giant white wave lifting him away from the ground and away from himself until he knew what he was.

“Who was he?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, which was true, though he was straining now to remember the man’s face. How could Steve’s mother’s ever-present cigarette and slight overbite and frowning eyebrows, ten lifetimes ago, feel so much closer than a face he’d seen _today_?

“People are dead.” _Me?_ “The bombing, the setup. The doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than ‘I don’t know.’”

He swallowed hard, straightened up. Steve was disappointed. Steve was—his handler, now, he supposed, Steve wanted him to do _better_ ,  _luchshe , soldat_, and he frowned, nervous. He tried to remember the man’s words, if not his face, the words he himself had replied with. He clenched his jaw, as if to find the ghosts of words in his mouth. He couldn’t remember anything after—“zhelaniye.” But. He had to. He had to, Steve was so disappointed already, luchshe, soldat, you stupid fucking thing—

Focus. Focus. What did he ask, what had Bucky said? What—

_Your real home_. He’d asked—

_Cryochamber. Where. Siberia. Where._

“He wanted to know about Siberia,” he said, slowly, and saw Steve’s face relax marginally. He might not be in trouble yet. _Cryochamber. Where, soldier. Tell me now._ “Where I was kept.” _Where they shelved you, you stupid—_ “He wanted to know exactly where.”

“Why would he need to know that?” Steve asked.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. But. But.

He could feel himself starting to shake, much harder now. He was always scared, stupid idiot coward baby dog idiot fucking shit, but god he was so scared of—of—

“Because I’m not the only winter soldier.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asked, and he opened his mouth and started to talk, and felt his voice shaking hard as he did, and it was embarrassing and stupid and he was like a useless fucking baby, but Steve and Sam didn’t say so. He told about how they were given another serum, and how they screamed and screamed and the Colonel told him this time he’d outdone himself, _vydayushchiysya, moy soldat, vot uvidish’_ , how he had them line up in the cage-room (“Cage room?” Sam asked, but he didn’t know what to say back), how they were to fight the soldier and they won, threw him clean across the room, went half mad right there, how he protected the Colonel, he did, he got him out right away and safe, really (“We got it, man,” Sam said, and his warm face got warmer), how they were kept separate after that. He didn’t say that they were allowed to fight _him_ five-to-one, how they’d hit him until his face was just a crushed mess that barely felt like a human’s, how they’d smacked him and taunted him and made him do any awful humiliating thing they wanted because he was too _stupid_ to understand—

“Who were they?” Steve asked him, when he’d stopped talking because his throat was closed up with cement.

“Their most elite death squad,” Bucky replied, because he remembered the Colonel telling him, proudly, “more kills than anyone in Hydra history, and that was before the serum.” _More kills between them,_ he didn’t add, _I have the most_. The Colonel said so. Patted his cheek—

“They all turn out like you?” asked Sam.

“Worse.” They weren’t good like him, they didn’t follow orders unless they _wanted_ to. They wanted to hurt people. They wanted to. They weren’t good like him, though.

“The doctor, could he control them?” Steve asked, and Bucky shuddered for a moment, remembering the doctor in Siberia, who hurt him so many times, and didn’t Steve hear when he said, said they _killed_ that doctor, “verdammter Sadist” Josef had called him with a laugh, trying to get Bucky to nod along, because they liked to trick him, make him think they were friends but then they’d—

Oh. But Steve meant the doctor who’d talked to Bucky. Who knew the words.

“Enough,” Bucky said, because the other soldiers would toe the line if they got blood in return.

“Said he wanted to see an empire fall,” Steve told Sam, and Bucky understood this was a conversation for people now, not him, but he wanted to be sure Steve knew the threat.

“With these guys he could do it,” he said. “They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain site. Infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize”—he’d done it himself often enough, especially in the ’60s—“they can take a whole country down in one night. You’d never see them coming.”

Steve nodded to him, then stepped closer to Sam, and Bucky knew he was dismissed. He looked down at his hands and clasped them so they’d stop shaking.

 

They all got into a very tiny car. Sam gave Steve a lot of shit about the tininess of the car, in a way that Bucky probably would have, too, if he trusted himself to speak, and if the big bloody wound on his head wasn’t throbbing quite so much—though Sam had soaked a hanky in cold water before they left the warehouse and given it to him to hold to his face, which did help. They drove—Steve drove, the little maniac, Bucky knew he’d learned to drive in army-issue Jeeps while they all threw little rocks and clumps of mud at him and laughed their asses off, because he was bad at it, but he’d gotten, evidently, a little better—and Bucky wasn’t sure if he was supposed to listen to Sam and Steve talking, but instead, he fell asleep, and woke up to Steve snoring lightly and Sam driving.

“Don’t think I can give a guy with a head injury a turn, sorry,” Sam said to him, and he jumped.

“That’s okay,” he mumbled.

“You doin’ okay?” Sam asked.

Bucky nodded.

“Yeah, you are,” said Sam, with a little smile in the corner of his lips, and he sounded kind of fond.

Bucky looked out the window for a long time, and then Steve gave an odd little snort in his sleep and mumbled something without waking up.

“He always such a dweeb?” Sam asked, jerking his chin at Steve.

“I don’t know. What’s a dweeb?”

Sam laughed and said, “A geek.”

Bucky smiled, then. “Yes. He has.”

Sam huffed a laugh and nodded. “He’s so wild about you, man,” he said, and Bucky looked up in surprise.

“Me?”

“Yeah. To hear him tell it you two were never apart for more than about ten minutes when you were kids.”

Bucky thought that sounded right, but he didn’t remember things all straight, just a rush of pictures and sounds and sensations. But it sounded right.

“Friends since childhood,” he said, like the museum did, back in Washington, a long time ago now.

“Not a lotta friends from childhood end up in Special Ops in the European theater together,” said Sam, lightly.

“Well. That part was more of an accident,” Bucky admitted, and Sam smiled at him again.

“But it happened.”

“Well. Yeah. I stick with Steve, he sticks with me.”

“Dweebs together, then,” he said, and Bucky set his head back on the window.

 

When he woke up again, Sam and Steve had switched back, and Steve said, “Oh, hi Buck We’re almost there,” and Bucky nodded.

They pulled under a bridge not long after, and Steve got out to talk to a lady.

“She has my wings,” Sam said. “And Steve’s shield.”

“That’s good.”

“Can you move your seat up?” Bucky asked.

“No,” said Sam, and Bucky, who’d dreamed on the way about tearing Sam’s wing off in a way he was pretty sure really happened, thought that was probably fair.

Outside, Steve kissed the woman. Bucky felt something lurch in his belly. Sam huffed in a way that could be approving or annoyed.

The woman went back to the front of her car. Steve bounced on his feet a little bit like he was proud of himself, then turned back to the two of them and made a face like, _oh, come on_. Bucky wondered if Sam knew Steve was a fairy before he was Captain America, which he remembered abruptly and with sudden specificity. But—he’d also, one time, put his _whole finger_ inside Edith Watson. They’d all been exceptionally proud of him for that. Either way this seemed to be a new thing.

Steve flipped Sam off from outside the car. Sam howled with laughter and Bucky shook his head.

 

At the airport, they met more people—two men and a woman, and they made a plan, or rather, Steve made a plan, and Sam helped, and everybody else listened. It boiled down, Bucky gathered, to “get to the helicopter.” Nobody looked Bucky in the eye much, but that was okay. He wouldn’t look at him, either.

He did get to tell everybody what the man on the PA system said, since it seemed nobody else understood German, but they didn’t look at him then, either. Given how he’d learned German, that was probably fair enough.

 

Later, Bucky didn’t remember much. He knew he and Sam were in the airport, but he could hear Steve on his earpiece when walked out onto the tarmac, and Iron Man—he was supposed to kill Iron Man, once, he was pretty sure—called him Steve’s old war buddy, and Bucky wanted to correct him so Steve didn’t get in trouble, but it sounded like he’d killed people yesterday, which he didn’t remember, and that made his head go a bit fuzzy—and so did the arrival of the man who dressed like a cat. “His dad died,” Sam said, “when—the bombing, in Vienna.”

The one he couldn’t have possibly done—if nothing else, he’d never be on camera unless he _wanted_ to be!

But Sam somehow found the jet, and they had to _move_ —

And then something—red and blue and human shaped— _splat_ onto the window.

“What the hell is that?”

“Everybody’s got a gimmick now,” said Sam, who was running, and Bucky wasn’t running too hard because then he’d leave Sam, who was helping him.

And then the red and blue thing kicked clean through the glass and sent Sam flying. So. Shit. Bucky rounded on him, wound up a good punch, and—

And the guy _caught it_ —

“You have a metal arm?! That is _awesome_ , dude!” yelled the red and blue person, who had _caught the metal arm_ , and whose voice sounded like he was, maybe, twelve. The fuck—

Sam swept through, scooped the kid right up, and left Bucky staring at the space where he’d been. If he was a he. He sounded like a he. What the fuck—

But then the kid had gotten loose of Sam, and was trying to disable his wings. They were flying around, and Bucky scrambled for anything to do from down here—since when the fuck did people just _fly_?—and, in the panic for something sufficiently large, ended up tearing up a large metal advertisement, which he lobbed at the kid who—

Holy fucking shit, lobbed it right back.

Bucky had a split second to realize what was about to happen before he was hard on the ground, woozy and pinned. Shit, shit.

Shit. Oh shit. Get up. Now.

He twisted his wrist, painfully, and pried the largest slab of metal off of him, wriggled up, staggered to his feet in time to hear a colossal smash and a grunt too deep to be anyone’s but Sam’s. Shit. Oh, shit.

He dove in front of Sam in time to stop him from being kicked clean in the face by the kid, but they slammed hard into the ground below. Stars burst in front of his vision and the kid had him pinned in some kind of—of sticky rope—the fuck— _let me up let me up let me up_ —

The kid was saying something, something about Mr. Stark— _how do you know Mr. Stark?_ —and Bucky needed his hands let up, please, he didn’t like to be pinned to the floor—

Then Sam’s funny red robot bird (“Redwing,” Sam had said, all proud) grabbed the tiny kid’s tiny wrist and dragged him out into the sky.

“You couldn’t have done that earlier?” Bucky groaned, his pinned wrist flexing madly.

“I hate you,” sighed Sam.

Bucky smiled, and then tried to turn towards Sam and felt his vision explode into stars again—Christ, but his _head_ —and he was still pinned down on the ground and his heart rate was thundering higher and higher and his throat was closing up—

Sam lurched himself into a sitting position. “Dude, you know you got one good arm?”

What. He did but it was—

Oh. Sam meant his person arm. He flexed his fingers without moving his head and felt them tingling, but free. Idiot.

He tore the—stuff. The rope, which was dry and crusty now, off his hand, then sat up, shakily, and used both of his own to rip Sam free as well. Sam stood up, energetic, and stuck out his arm to haul Bucky to his feet.

“Let’s head back out,” he said, panting, flush with the pleasure Bucky vaguely remembered they all used to get, before, in the war, when a fight was good. He felt none of the same, but his head was sluggish and Sam was giving orders, though, so he nodded.

“You good, dude?” Sam asked.

Bucky nodded again, and his vision swam.

“You remember what’s happening?”

“Yeah,” Bucky lied, his head suddenly blank and echoing.

“You sure?”

“I don’t—don’t like—to be tied down—”

He was babbling. _Don’t speak unless spoken to. Idiot._

“Oh, Jesus. Okay, okay. That’s okay. I know, dude, I know. Okay. Hey, look at me. All you gotta do is get to the jet. Okay? I’ll try to stick with you, we’ll get to Steve soon. All you gotta do is get to the jet, okay, Bucky?”

Sam had a very nice voice, like warmth, or a fleece cloth. Bucky nodded.

“Can you look into my eyes?”

Bucky did.

“Yeah. Okay. Just gotta get to the jet. And you can do that, okay? You can. Right?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, you can,” he said, and slapped Bucky’s shoulder once, and then they ran back out onto the tarmac.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  abstinentnyy sindrom, soldat, eto proydet - "Withdrawal symptoms, solider, it'll pass."  
> luchshe - better  
> vydayushchiysya, moy soldat, vot uvidish’ - "Outstanding, my soldier, you'll see."  
> verdammter Sadist - goddamn sadist


	16. Chapter Fifteen: The Bunker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We knew it was coming, part two.

_Get to the jet_ , he thought, when they caught up to Steve, and _get to the jet_ , when the ground below them cracked and someone floating in the sky (how hard did he hit his head?) told them to stand down, and _just get to the jet, that’s your order_ , when the man like a cat kicked him hard onto the ground.

 _Get to the jet, that’s your order_ , he thought, as he staggered to his feet and tried to fight past the man, who was relentless, too fast—

“I didn’t kill your father,” he said, around the thick gauze that seemed to be wrapping his brain that was _get to the jet that’s your order_ , because he wasn’t in Vienna, he _wasn’t_ —

“Then why did you run?” replied the man, voice so full of quiet anger the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck stood up, and then the man bent his arm back, his _metal arm_ , like it was paper, threw him, and when Bucky tried to sit up, head spinning wildly, there were _fucking claws_ at his throat—

But something stopped the man, and Bucky didn’t stop to understand how he flew away when no one was nearby because _GET TO THE JET_ , and he ran and dodged the sounds of shots and grunts of pain, and saw Steve and dashed to catch up with him.

“We gotta go,” he panted. “The guy’s probably in Siberia by now,” because that was _why_ they had to get to jet—

“We gotta draw out the flyers,” said Steve, into his com now, “I’ll take Vision. You get the jet.”

“No, _you_ get to the jet! Both of you!” Sam roared, and Bucky bristled, because he had an _order_ —and because they had to _leave_ —“The rest of us aren’t getting out of here,” Sam finished.

“As much as I hate to admit it, if we’re gonna win this, some of us are gonna have to lose, said the—the one with the arrow?

Idiot. Steve never left the fight—

“This isn’t the real fight, Steve,” Sam said, like he’d heard Bucky’s thought.

“Alright, Sam,” said Steve, and Bucky had never in his life seen Steve capitulate so quickly. “What’s the play?”

“We need a diversion. Something big.”

“I got something kind of big,” said the—other guy? They didn’t even say their damn names. “But I can’t hold it very long.” What the fuck? “On my signal, run like hell.” _We can’t even see you, dumbass_. “And if I tear myself in half, don’t come back for me.”

“What the fuck, Steve?” Bucky said, aloud.

“You’re sure about this, Scott?” Steve said, instead of answering.

Scott seemed sure. He was babbling and Bucky was wondering where the fuck he was— _how_ were they supposed to wait for his signal if they couldn’t _see_ the bastard?—and then the guy was the FUCKING size of a building.

Bucky opened his mouth to ask Steve if this was a dream, but then Steve said, “I guess that’s the signal,” and Bucky knew that meant _run like hell_. And that, he was pretty good at.

And so he was running, he was running so hard he almost didn’t stop when an air control tower started to fall, and then it stopped falling and he didn’t care why, he ran, and ran, and then a girl screamed somewhere behind them but he didn’t _care_ , he ran and ran and it was collapsing around them but he was clear, so was Steve, and—

And the woman was there, with the red hair. He’d have known her by her stance even if he hadn’t read about her when he read what Steve and the others had done in New York a few years back. Every inch a Black Widow. God, even the way she jutted out her hip.

“You’re not gonna stop,” she said, quietly.

“You know I can’t,” said Steve. He never could, chernaya vdova. Sorry.

“I’m gonna regret this,” she said, raised her empty fist like she had a gun, aimed right to Steve’s head, then—

Then flicked her wrist the tiniest fraction of an inch up, and shot over Steve’s shoulder, and the man with the claws howled and staggered back in electric blue pain. Bucky’s shoulders tensed up in immediate, pained sympathy.

“ _Go_ ,” she said, and Steve nodded once, and he and Bucky ran to the jet and got in. _Got to the jet_. And Christ, they were going to Siberia.

                     

Once Steve got the jet airborne and out of range, Steve said, “It’s okay. You—we’re safe now, okay? It’s okay.”

Bucky swallowed. “What’s gonna happen to the others?” he asked, but Steve didn’t reply. After a few minutes, he said, again, “It’s okay.”

They rode in silence for a long time. Bucky felt his brain flooding in dirty water and elastic almost-memories, of other rides with Steve, on trains and plains and Jeeps, subway cars and roller coaster cars and the rattling tram in a starved little French village in the autumn of 1944. None of it felt real, but none of it felt any less real than the jet.

“What’s going to happen to your friends?”

Steve didn’t answer for a moment. He said, “Whatever it is—I’ll deal with it.”

This wasn’t encouraging; it certainly wasn’t a plan. Bucky thought of Sam, of the younger girl and the other two men who’d do this for—for him? Probably for Steve, but Steve as doing it for him. It felt so pointless, so useless, as if pretending he was human would make him so, as if he deserved such an effort when all he’d done to distinguish himself was fall off a train and be pretty good with a rifle. As if there was anything about him worthy of all this fucking effort.

“I don’t know if I’m worth all this, Steve.”

Steve paused, and turned around partly, as if he wanted to look at Bucky but didn’t, as if the weight of the truth of Bucky’s statement were cricking his neck. Which. Of course it would. Steve’s extraordinary capacity to love useless bastards notwithstanding, there had to be only so much he could take.

“What you did all those years,” he said, and Bucky’s chest tightened, his head hurt, “it wasn’t you. You didn’t have a choice.”

Those two statements, Bucky thought distantly, did not mean the same thing, and neither were quite true. _You didn’t have a choice_ and—no, he hadn’t _joined up_ , he hadn’t volunteered for this like Josef or the other soldiers who, he remembered with a jolt of panic in his belly, they were on their way to see. But it wasn’t like they’d had to keep the gun to his head forever. Or like they’d ever taken it off, either.

 _It wasn’t you_. Yes it was. Yes, Steve, it was. It was. Yes it was.

 _You didn’t have a choice_ , and no, he didn’t, they hurt him, endlessly and creatively and until he didn’t even realize there was a life outside of being hurt. Okay.

“I know,” he said, because he did, he’d read a book in the library back—home?—about _stres post traumatic_ , about how it wasn’t unusual for people who’d been hurt a lot and seen a lot of blood and been _dezumanizat_ to feel like him, like a heavy body underwater all the time looking for the sparkling slats of light. But he also knew that anything like that made for pretty cold comfort for the crushed bodies he’d left in his wake. “But I did it.”

Steve didn’t have an answer for that. How could he. Because he did. He did it all. It didn’t _matter_ if they told him to, if someone else would have if he didn’t, because it was his hands crushing windpipes and his fists shattered eye sockets and it would only ever be his and always be only him who did the things he did, so of course Steve didn’t have much to say.

 

After a little while, or maybe a long one, Steve said, “We’re almost here.” He didn’t say anything else, and Bucky tried not to think about Josef’s feral smile or the way he called him “the little soldier.”

And they landed—bumpily, which, since when was Steve a pilot?—and Bucky set about to finding guns. They were on a rack labeled “Romanoff.” Oh, chernayye vdovy. So predictable sometimes. Still, a wonderful choice: an M249 SAW Paratrooper, one he’d probably have chosen for himself.

“Hey—Buck?” Steve called, and Bucky stepped up to meet him. “You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?”

What.

No.

But—

Oh. Yes, vaguely. He could remember the smell of it, suddenly, remember being about seventeen and piss poor and trying to charm the driver like an idiot.

“Was that—the time you used our train money—to buy hotdogs?” They’d both loved hot dogs, then, treated them like some sort of delicacy. And they’d had the bottomless stomachs of young boys, and good money to blow because Bucky’s dad had won something serious in Jersey and given his son $5 to spend, an astronomical amount. _We’re like royalty_ , Steve had said, holding four hotdogs like tiny swaddled babies in his arms.

“ _You_ blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead.”

Did he? He didn’t recall that part, but it sounded about right.

“Dolores. You called her Dot.” _Oh_ —Dot, she was kind of childish but it was part of her charm, she’d been Bucky’s girlfriend before Lois, the first one he’d ever said anything serious to, and the ripe and deadly serious old age of seventeen.

“She’s gotta be a hundred years old right now,” he muttered.

“So are we, pal,” said Steve, with that stupid sweet smile he got when he was pleased with himself, had always got, and he clapped Bucky’s shoulder once and led the way into the bunker.

The lightness and warmth of Rockaway and Dot and hot dogs and $5 and being seventeen drained out of Bucky fast, and he hated every twitching memory this place reared up inside his head, ugly and demanding and _God_ , the other soldiers might be inside—

The door was open.

“He can’t have been here more than a few hours,” said Steve.

“Long enough to wake them up,” said Bucky. They didn’t need the chair. That was just for him. That was inside, too. Oh, god. Oh god, oh _god_ —

They were in. Bucky knew every inch of this place. He found himself leading Steve, gun up, heart thundering, oh god oh god, he hated this elevator, he always had, it meant he was going down to the chair or the ice or the doctor or—

“You ready?” Steve asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said.

When the door opened, it wasn’t Josef on the other side. It wasn’t the doctor either. It was—Iron Man. Who’d been at the airport. Bucky’s head was so fuzzy he could barely understand anything Steve and the man, Tony, were saying to one another.

He didn’t really remember, later, what had happened, because Josef had a bullet hole in his head, inside his cryo chamber, and the chair was there _waiting for him_ , like it had been all along, like it had just been there _waiting for him_ , oh Jesus oh god oh god, and then—

And then they were watching a tape, and it was Bucky—the soldier, on the tape, he knew, and he remembered, only vaguely, the shape of that night, of _Sergeant Barnes?_ , of—of the woman calling “Howard, Howard,” though that wasn’t on the tape, no sound was, and at the end his own face was there to shoot the camera, because he climbed up after the pulled it out, turned it into Karpov with the payload like a good little soldier.

Then he’s running, because Iron Man—Tony—who—he’s going to kill him, he’s going to kill him and Steve is saying _run_ but the hatch closed, almost on his face, almost on his hands, the hatch he’d stared at so many times from the bottom, from his chair, with the white blue pain electrifying his head and rending it into pieces, pulling him apart until he was nothing, staring up at the hatch and wishing it was open, wishing he could climb out, but it closed right on him and his brain fuzzed out and maybe he got kicked in the head after, but maybe that was just what it felt like, and then

And then

And then the arm

came

off

and then Steve—

—Steve was dragging him away, and his head was drooping down, and voices were swirling around and above him and somebody was shaking him and it hurt so much his brain whited out and he didn’t really think or see anymore.


	17. Chapter Sixteen: The Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a whole extra scene into this just to mention Nakia once.

Later, he would only vaguely know that Steve had taken him out of the bunker, that they’d boarded a jet—he wasn’t even sure if it was the same one—and flown—somewhere. His brain was detached, his mind roving and frightened and barely recognizable as a person’s. If he even was a person. It all swirled together, more river water, more faces on dark roadsides.

Then: they landed, somewhere, no place Bucky could remember being before. Steve was talking in a low voice to someone else nearby, whose accent was lilting and melodic and whose words Bucky didn’t follow. God, every part of him hurt. His _head_.

Then Steve was in front of his face, noses almost touching, swimming before him as Bucky blinked grime out of his eyes.

“Buck,” he said.

“Guh?” Bucky managed.

“I have to go do some stuff, it’s urgent. But I’m not leaving you. T’Challa is going to take you and he’ll keep you safe, okay? He knows what happened, he knows it wasn’t your fault. I’m going to do—what I needa do, and I’ll be back, okay? I’m not leaving. I promise.”

He paused, and it occurred to Bucky that any of this was supposed to mean something to him.

“Yeah,” he managed.

“Okay,” Steve said, and patted his knee. “So T’Challa’s gonna take this jet. He’s taking you back to Wakanda. You’ll be safe there, I promise.”

Only about forty percent of the words in that sentence made sense, but Bucky nodded so as to end the conversation, which was hurting his head even more than the nodding did.

“Okay.” Steve stood back up, paused, and squeezed Bucky’s shoulder hard. The good one. Not that one that was—

Anyway.

“I’m gonna be back soon,” Steve said. “I’m really sorry about all this, Bucky.”

And then he was gone, and Bucky was dozing in the back of the plane, blood oozing slowly from somewhere on his face onto the window.

“Sergeant Barnes. Wake up.”

Bucky started awake, and saw a face he didn’t know where Steve had been, in the jet, unbuckled and turned around. Sunlight was streaming into the cabin, and the man was looking at him with a kind of thoughtful quietude, as if waiting to see what he’d do.

He squinted. Where was _Steve_ —?

“I don’t believe we’ve been, ah, formally acquainted,” the man said. “I am T’Challa, and we are in Wakanda.”

His brain lurched. When he was pretending to be a person, in the Congo—he’d researched this—in the sixties?—he’d heard about Wakanda, because it wasn’t far from where they camped sometimes. Back then, at least, he remembered it had been kind of like a legend, or a secret, because people in Wakanda didn’t like outsiders. But—wait—

“Your father,” he mumbled, and his voice sounded like sandpaper.

The man’s face stayed smooth, composed, but a crease appeared between his eyebrows. “I know now,” he said, “that you had nothing to do with his death. I apologize,” he added, and raised his eyes to meet Bucky’s, “for my error. I hope to rectify it.”

Bucky blinked, then said, “Oh,” stupidly.

“I have some things I must do,” he said, “but I am leaving you in good hands—the best, I think, that I could. Come.”

He stood, and gestured for Bucky to exit the jet with him, leading him onto a pavilion in the blinding sunlight. Everything seemed to glisten. He stood for a moment, blinking hard, and then a blur of a person shot out of the building ahead of them and launched itself into T’Challa’s arms.

“Brother!” the blur called, and then Bucky saw it was a girl, quite young, and her arms were around T’Challa’s neck, her face pressed into his shoulder. He returned the embrace, more slowly, but held her very tight. After a moment, he pulled back, cupped the girl’s chin.

“How is Mama?” he asked her, seriously, and she reached up to squeeze his wrist.

“You know how Mama is,” she said, quietly, and Bucky, realizing she must be his sister, that she, too, must have just lost a father, felt like an intruder on the family grief. “Mama is always the same. But.”

T’Challa made a noise of acquiesce, and dropped his hand from her face. He said, “And you?”

“I—” The girl looked down, then back up at her brother. “I’m alright.”

T’Challa looked at her for a moment, then nodded. Then he looked up over the girl’s head and said, “Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky started, and turned to look at the pair. The girl was watching him with cool curiosity.

“Allow me to introduce to you the head of the Wakandan Design Group, our nation’s foremost expert on bioengineering, master engineer, and the princess of Wakanda—my sister. Shuri.”

Bucky blinked. Shuri nudged T’Challa in the ribs and said, “Hello, Sergeant Barnes. My brother told me he would bring you here. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She paused, looked between her brother and Bucky, and added, brightly, “You are also the first white person I have ever met, and I need to tell you, we do not have casseroles here.”

Bucky stared. T’Challa made a noise like a slightly annoyed cat. Shuri’s face burst into a radiant grin. She gestured Bucky towards the building behind her. “Come, Sergeant. I will take you to my lab.”

Anxiety pricked through Bucky’s gauzey brain, but T’Challa added quickly, “My sister will not do anything to hurt you, I assure you.”

Bucky stumbled along behind them, followed Shrui into a brightly lit, sterile-looking laboratory at the bottom of an impressive spiral staircase. The walls were covered in bright colors and bold, black lines; the lab itself was cool, shining, and oddly calming.

Something on T’Challa’s wrist chirped and he looked at it. “Captain Rogers will be here in a few hours.” Bucky looked at him. _Steve?_ T’Challa looked at Shuri. “I need to go see Mama, and speak with Okoye and the Counsel. I’ll be back when Captain Rogers arrives.”

“And then what?” asked the girl.

“I have to get Nakia,” said T’Challa, and he made a little noise and told his sister, “Don’t look at me like that.” He sounded gruff, but fond, like an old man chiding children in the street. He turned to Bucky. “I leave you in the most capable hands I know.”

And then he was gone, and the bright young girl before Bucky said, “Alright. Is your nose broken?”

 

A few hours later, when Steve arrived, a few things had happened: first, Bucky had taken a shower, and it was the best feeling he’d ever experienced. It was only when he stepped out he learned he had, in fact, stayed in there for forty-five minutes. Smiling Shuri didn’t mind; in fact, she was thrilled. “I’ve had lots of time to think about what we can do for you. To replace your arm—”

Bucky’s chest compressed. His vision swam. _Earn that arm_. No. No. He didn’t want to replace the arm. The arm belonged back in the bunker under the closed hatch, next to the waiting chair, in the cold and dark and—

“We don’t have to,” a voice was saying, and Bucky blinked hard and saw Shuri before him, her face creased in disgust, or maybe something else. “I got ahead of myself. It isn’t a priority.”

He couldn’t meet her eyes.

After a moment, she said, “How are you feeling?”

He had no idea, and tears were still blurring his eyes, and then she vanished and reappeared with a steaming mug which she pressed into his hands. He looked up at her, his hair still dripping.

She smiled, almost shyly. “My baba always says tea fixes everything.”

Bucky stared at her, trying to remember why that phrase itched his brain. After a moment, he conjured an image of Falsworth, heating water in a cheap tin pan and tutting, _Nothing a cuppa tea can’t fix_.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and touched her mug lightly to his. “How did you break your nose?”

Quite unexpectedly, Bucky felt the story welling up in him, fast, bubbling out without context or pauses or thought, just talking, about the bunker, the cold, the video, the chair, the other soldiers, how scared he was of them even though they hung perfectly still like bugs in amber, even though they were dead.

“Is that how you’ve stayed the same age?” Shuri asked, at one point, when Bucky’s voice was growing thin and raspy. “Cryostasis?”

Bucky nodded.

“That’s cruel,” she muttered. “In Wakanda we have such technology, but it is only for the very ill—”

But Bucky had stopped hearing her; his entire body was canted forward, his breath coming in quick, nervous gasps. He tried to make the words in his belly slide out of his mouth. He felt like a balloon without air. He swallowed, twice, painfully. “You. You can. Freeze me?”

“Don’t worry!” she said, eagerly. “We would never.”

Bucky looked at her, her shining, eager young face; looked down at his own hollow-feeling body, tilted to one side without his heavy arm, the emptiness there positively ringing. Thought of the _words_ , thought of being found again, thought of how badly he had missed the crisp, cold clarity of the ice sometimes.

“Could you do it again?”

 

Steve didn’t like it. Steve, of course, didn’t like much right now; he’d rolled back to Wakanda looking rumbled and dirty and exhausted. He wouldn’t say anything but that everyone was safe. Those words, exactly: “Everyone’s safe.” The subtext: _From what you did_. Bucky knew.

His face pinched up like he was in pain when Bucky told him what he planned to do. “Bucky,” he’d said. “ _Bucky_.”

“I just think it’s safest,” Bucky said, thinking of the electricity screaming through his veins. He only wanted to sleep.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve said again, like it was all he could say.

“It’s for the best,” Bucky said. “Until Shuri can—I mean, until _anybody_ can figure out how to—to make me—”

He didn’t finish. Steve’s face said what Bucky knew: _They probably can’t. That damage is probably done. You’ve learned a lifetime of violence. It’s all you’re good for, now._

This was, in a way, a decommissioning. It wasn’t even going to hurt.

“You’re sure about this?” Steve asked, his face a mirror of that empty mask he’d crafted back in the early twenties, in a freezing tenement on Myrtle Avenue, when his father had died in the middle of the night and Steve had discovered the body in the morning, tucked into bed, mouth hanging open, face slack and waxy and cold. Bucky knew all this, remembered it with terrific force, because Steve, young and panicking, had run to Bucky’s apartment in just his socks, nearly froze his feet off, to fetch help. _Mama isn’t home and Daddy won’ move an-an-an—!_ By the time Bucky’s family had tramped through the snow, Bucky’s mom carrying Steve so he wouldn’t ruin his poor socks any further, to discover Joseph Rogers was, in fact, dead, Steve’s face had fallen into that same hardness, that same impenetrable wall of muted grief.

 _You’re sure about this?_ Steve asked, with the face he’d worn all his life. Of course Bucky wasn’t. But.

“I can’t trust my own mind,” he sighed. “So, until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head”— _fat chance, soldat_ —“I think going back under is the best thing. For everybody.”

So Steve, like a handler by accident, let him, and his last thought as he went under wasn’t a prayer for peace or clarity, wasn’t even some cruel snicker in the back of his head about the fruitlessness of it all, wasn’t relief or panic or dread. It was, _Poor Steve. Never leaving, always left_.


	18. Chapter Seventeen: Bucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over text not in English for translations. I really, really hope my Xhosa is passable.

When he woke up, three small circles hovered above him. He thought, _This is a dream_.

“Ingaba uhleli?” said someone, voice high and reedy like—

_Like_ —

Like a little kid. Bucky sat up. The three little orbs—tiny heads, _kids’ heads_ , and their bodies attached, scrambled away, giggling, crying something in their laughter.

“Are you bothering that man again?” a familiar voice called. _Again_?

He rose, creaking, and walked to the doorway—he was in a…tent? No. A small house, brown walls, rich earth smell. He walked through the doorway the children had run through, and found himself facing a lake, a landscape as beautiful as any he had seen before. The sun was low in the sky, hot and on its way up.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” said a voice, a familiar one, and it took a moment for the sweet face in Bucky’s vision to orient itself within his brain. _Shuri_.

He swallowed. His voice was somewhere inside his belly, refusing to show itself. He frowned. _Sergeant Barnes_ was—not a man who existed anymore. Not here, not in this century, not by this lake.

“Bucky,” he said, and liked the way it sounded.

The girl smiled. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

The answer, truly, was empty, ringingly so, shockingly so, like clear glass barely balanced together in the shape of a one armed man with hair brushing his shoulders and a reinforced spine held barely straight.

“Good,” he said, and then, remembering, “Thank you.”

She grinned, her face so untroubled, so kind, that Bucky felt some color seeping into his empty form, his lifeless body and his floating head. “Come,” she said, and touched his arm, so casually, so gently, like he was just a person and she was just getting his attention, maybe even fondly, “Much for you to learn.”

 

“The trigger words weren’t for your brain,” she explained, back in her lab, over tea and a plate of something heady smelling and delicious Shuri had called “ugali” and which was filling and warm and the best thing Bucky had ever tasted, starchy and chewy and garnished in sharp-tasting lettuce Shuri had called “sukuma wiki.”

Across the table laden with tea, second helpings, and what appeared to be several farms worth of spiced meat on kababs, Shuri slid a thin, gray piece of plastic, the side of which contained an empty slot and a small piston.

“This was full of ketamine, and something else I’d never seen before, all of it more than twenty years old,” she said. “And it was _activated_ when someone said those trigger words. If I said them now—” Bucky’s whole body stiffened, _please don’t_ —“which I won’t, the piston would start moving. It put the drugs into your system, which made you more suggestible and probably induced some kind of psychosis. Combined with psychological conditioning it must have felt as if the words had total power over you.”

Yes. It did. Bucky’s ugali felt heavy and too large to go down his throat. He remembered cold, and electricity, and pain beyond measure, and the world tilting on its side.

“Luckily,” said Shuri brightly, “it’s gone now. Once I found it I took you out of cryostasis to perform a surgery—don’t worry, no scar. Then we moved you out by the lake, of course, much better than a lab for recovery. You slept about another two days, I had you sedated, of course, and an anesthesiologist from the best hospital in Wakanda advised me—she has read Dr. Erskine’s work at length, and was able to guess about your metabolism. You woke up a few times, the boys bothering you, they asked me why your skin had been erased.”

Bucky looked down, wondering if his skin had, indeed, somehow vanished.

Shuri laughed, and it sounded like bells, clear and warm. “They’d never seen a white man before. The name they were calling you meant ‘white wolf.’”

Bucky blinked, and then snorted. He remembered once when his sister Ruthie was very young, they’d walked past a black family on the way to the train station, and she’d tugged Bucky’s coat sleeve and said, “Hey, how come that other girl’s arm is brown?” The confusion, apparently, was universal.

“Well,” Shuri said, grinning brightly, “eat some more. Once you have adjusted to solid foods you will have to have some real food. We’ll make—oh! My favorite. How to explain in English—jeweled vegetable pilau with berbere braised lamb.”

Bucky remembered pulling treasured moldy bread out of dumpsters, and remembered the colorless, thick liquid that was fed into the tubes that fed him through his nose and the scarred up port on his belly. He thought of how good _jeweled vegetable pilau with berbere braised lamb_ sounded. He smiled.

 

The days and weeks bled together, pleasantly, like watercolor, and Bucky was told that the little squat house with its rich-soil smell that he’d woken up on, by the bankside, was his as long as he wanted it. “Which is especially good,” Shuri told him, “because Wakanda is the safest place in the world, and you are an internationally wanted criminal at this time and so are all your friends.” She’d grinned, then, and added, “It’s awesome.”

 

Shuri showed him something called “vines.” He wasn’t sure why she wanted to, but a lot of them turned out to be pretty funny. If nothing else, they illuminated why Shuri said a good fifty percent of what she said, including her insistence on offering him “water casserole.”

 

The boys who’d come to wake him up, who called him “white wolf,” took a liking to him. They practiced English and he practiced Xhosa, and dragged him out to play in their ball games and play-wars. They were called T’Shan, Khanata, and Ishanta. They had a number of friends who also liked to hang off Bucky, but those three returned day after day.

“Pick me up!” they squealed, laughing. “Be goalie! Where’s your arm! Tell us a story!”

One day, Ishanta’s sister M’Koni shyly asked to comb Bucky’s hair.

The boys spent this period of unusual stillness from their giant friend trying to teach him the rules of the part-stickball, part-soccer, part free-for-all game they had invented. It distracted Bucky from the tingling panic of hands on his head.

“Time to play!” Khantana shrieked, the moment M’Koni pulled her hands from Bucky’s head, and Bucky saw how small they were, how delicate, how sweetly she’d arranged his filthy hair. He felt something lighten inside of him.

“Time to _play_!” Khantana hollered again. Bucky nodded and stood up.

They played past sundown.

 

“Captain Rogers is coming,” Shuri told him, solemnly, one day at the lakeside as she helped him feed the goats he’d taken to keeping. Bucky felt his chest stutter, his body hollow out. _Steve_.

“I can tell him you’re still sleeping,” she added, quickly, as if sensing the panic threatening to swallow Bucky whole. “If you’re not—ready.”

Bucky waited for his heart to slow down, let a goat nibble his fingers. He remembered Steve’s face as he’d vanished into the ice, remembered that same stupid giant-eyebrowed nervous face like a shadow that had trailed him across oceans and centuries.

“I’d like to see him,” he said.

 

Steve was the same, which was nice. So much, so many faces, changed so much while Bucky slept, he’d forgotten Steve would look just the same as he had in 1945. Well. Mostly the same. A little wearier. And he had a beard.

“You have a beard,” he said, instead of what he’d rehearsed in his head, which was just _Hi, Steve_.

“You have goats,” Steve shot back, and then he was moving past Shuri, who’d brought him down to Bucky’s little house by the lake, past the goats and the soccer ball T’Shan had left on the grass, until he was where Bucky was, in the doorway, and then he seemed to just keep moving, to envelope Bucky fully, in a hug that felt like exhaling after a long time under water.

 

They walked around the lake, alone, and talked. Steve talked about the fallout from what had happened in Vienna and Germany and Siberia, skipping the details that made Bucky’s hand shake, and he could tell, because he was holding it. He talked about those he rescued from the Raft, about the phone he’d left Tony with and the terse text he’d received: “Will do, Cap.” Apparently he hadn’t heard since.

“But he—he isn’t—I mean. You. Me. What I did to his parents?” Bucky asked, his throat clogging as he heard like an echo the woman shouting for _Howard! Howard!_

“Oh,” said Steve. “No. He gave a big interview about it, to the _New Yorker_. He said he doesn’t hold prisoners of war responsible for what they did in response to torture. He said he’d been tortured, uh, this was a few years before I was out of the ice, but he said—he said, basically, that you can’t hold somebody responsible. The exact quote was that when he was under torture he’d say anything. He said, uh, he’d ‘killed his mother and kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.’”

“The _Lindbergh_ baby?” Bucky asked, his head a rush with the smell of newspaper ink and the talk of the schoolyard the spring he turned fifteen, the last year he’d attended school.

Steve smiled fondly. “I know. I got the reference.” He squeezed Bucky’s hand. “The point is, whatever else he’s got in his head—he knows it wasn’t you.”

“It was,” said Bucky.

“I know,” said Steve.

 

They walked for a long time. Their hands stayed intertwined.

 

“Do you remember that spring?” Steve said, suddenly, when the sun was going down and Bucky was wondering if Shuri could arrange some jeweled vegetable pilau with berbere braised lamb, which had been as delicious as he’d imagined and more. “The spring of the Lindbergh kidnapping, I mean?”

Bucky frowned, and could hear the talk, smell his mother’s cooking, feel Steve yammering at his side, short and energetic.

“A little.”

“Your ma got so worried somebody was gonna take Ruthie and Lil,” said Steve, and Bucky meant to say what he’d said back then, _Yeah, cuz we’re right behind the Lindberghs for good ransom money_ , but instead his whole brain seemed to flutter at the sound of someone saying his sisters’ names aloud, not on a museum plaque even, or on a Wikipedia page, just _there_ , just _spoken_ , by someone who _knew them_ , who said _Ruthie and Lil_ like it was nothing at all.

“Oh,” he whispered, and then his face was pressed against Steve’s neck.

“You—are you—what’s wrong?” Steve asked, holding him anyways, folding himself around Bucky the way Bucky, back in that spring of 1932, had imagined he might someday, in some secret dream place, hold Steve. Fully and warmly, protectively, familiarly, possessively, gently. _This person is my person_.

“Nothing,” he said, thickly, face still in Steve’s warm skin. “It’s just. You _knew_ them. You _knew_ —me.”

“Of course,” Steve said, hoarsely, his cheek pressed into Bucky’s hair. “I’ve always known you. I always will.”

Bucky, who couldn’t say the same, settled on the next best thing.

“I love you,” he said, and felt Steve’s whole body take the sentence in, his breath stuttering for a moment.

“I love you, too,” he said, after a moment, and Bucky craned his neck and pushed a tiny kiss on Steve’s jaw. Steve’s mouth fell open, and he made a strange little noise like he was stretching a limb that had fallen asleep.

Bucky tilted his head back further, and with the heart-hammering confidence that usually accompanied plunging into battle, or into freezing water, or out of a moving vehicle, he pressed his lips firmly to Steve’s. Steve made another strained noise.

“Really?” he whispered.

“Of course,” said Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >Shuri feeds Bucky [ugali](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugali) because it's very common in the area where Wakanda canonically is in the MCU, and because it's probably easy on his stomach. (Sukuma wiki is collard greens!)
> 
> >Both the question about Bucky's skin being erased and the question about why someone's arm is brown are real questions I have heard real children ask. 
> 
> >Doesn't jeweled vegetable pilau with berbere braised lamb sound just amazing? You can make some! Credit to the awesome writer Nnedi Okorafor for devising this recipe. 
> 
> >T'Shan, Khanata, Ishanta, and M'Kobi are named after 616 T'Challa's cousins.
> 
> >The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped on March 1st or 2nd, 1932, at the Lindbergh home in New Jersey, and his body was discovered on May 12th of that year less than five miles from the Lindbergh's property. It was an absolute sensation, referred to by one newspaper written as the "biggest story since the Resurrection," and as teenagers only a river away from Jersey, Steve and Bucky probably talked about it plenty. Please feel free and in fact encouraged to message me with theories or discussions of the Lindbergh kidnapping. 
> 
> >That's all, folks! Thanks for riding along. :) 
> 
> **Translations**  
>  Ingaba uhleli? - "Are you awake?"


End file.
